


The Walking Ted

by red_b_rackham



Category: Better Off Ted
Genre: An Outrageous Amount of Running, F/M, General Better Off Ted Shenanigans, General Zombie Gore, Horror, Humor, The Beta Branch Big Bang, The Other Science Bros, Veridian Dynamics, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2480597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham/pseuds/red_b_rackham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Veridian causes a zombie apocalypse (because of course they did). Frankly, Ted is surprised it didn’t happen sooner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **A/n #1:** This story would not exist in any form, let alone it’s current form, without the mad beta skills of [stars_inthe_sky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky), who is a beautiful, talented land mermaid (and the Leslie Knope to my Ann Perkins). Thank you for every bit of every help, you glorious sunflower (especially as I took years to actually finish this beast once and for all)! 
> 
> Also major props to my wonderful [Beta Branch](http://thebetabranch.prophpbb.com/) crew, namely Shazrolane and Alex K, for their fantastic editing and _ridiculously_ glowing praise that completely inflated my ego to obscene proportions.
> 
>  **A/n #2:** I could find absolutely no mention in the show nor online of where (as in what city) BOT takes place, so I went with a (appropriately silly sounding) fictional one.
> 
>  **Warning:** some language, moderate (zombie related) gore.

                                                      

At Veridian Dynamics, things often ran like a well-oiled machine. There’s a process for every new project, from inception to completion, from the announcement to the presentation of said product to the general public. However, like any machine (well-oiled or otherwise), sometimes something breaks, and it becomes the _opposite_ of well-oiled, suddenly resembling something more like a smoking heap of hot, screeching metal.

That was pretty much how this month went.

At the end of each month, Ted always compiled reports of all ongoing projects. He passed them on to Veronica, and they would both comb through the reports for accuracy. She would sign off on them, and then the dockets and files were sent up a level to Chet and Management, who probably either threw them out or set them in their paper inbox but never bothered to actually read them but required them by a certain deadline all the same.

This month, there was first the incident with the Self-Boiling Pot Project ( _No need for a stovetop any longer! Great for camping! Great as a red-hot weapon!_ ), which had resulted in an entire wing of the lab being consumed by fire. No one was hurt, but Ted had to postpone working on his month-end reports in order to deal with the clean-up, paperwork, and fallout. (Lem had lost his pet fern Jerry in the blaze and had been quite distraught, though Phil reminded him about the Not Naming Things rule they’d instituted.)

After that, Ted had been forced to rush the Green Chairs project (colorful and environmentally friendly, made from recycled paper and plastic, and not at all comfortable), due to an order that came straight from Chet, who was dealing with a PR nightmare over the previous Red Chair scandal. This was followed swiftly by the failure of the Golden Goose project (a microwaveable goose that was supposed to come out crispy and golden brown but mostly just came out rock-hard and inedible—they were looking into weaponizing it instead).

Next came Mardi Gras week (even though it was June, they weren’t in New Orleans, and no one got anything done once the slushie machine started sloshing all over the kitchen floor every half-hour), Food Poisoning Day (which wasn’t a nationally-sanctioned Veridian holiday but happened whenever the lobster salad and fish tacos were served on the same day, no matter how vehemently the cooks swore this time would be different), and a variety of smaller speed bumps that required Ted to continually push his month-end reports closer and closer to the Absolute, Unmoveable Final Deadline (which was two deadlines after the Regular Deadline).

Then, suddenly, the Absolute, Unmoveable Final Deadline day arrived, and Ted could neither avoid nor shove it away a moment longer. So, with sweat glistening on his brow, Ted posted a sizeable _Do Not Disturb (Unless Actual, World-Ending Emergency Is Occurring)_ sign on his mahogany office door, shut it with a soft click, and settled down to write up the necessary reports as quickly as possible.

He had until 1 o’clock in the afternoon.

 

~

 

At 12:48, Ted was finishing up, hardly daring to believe he was going to make the deadline (albeit by mere minutes, but it was still _before_ ). He hastened down to the print room at the end of the hall and scooped the reports off the printer, which clattered and groaned ominously as it ejected and stapled the final pages. Ted took off at a brisk pace, half a step above a speed walk and two steps below a jog, for Veronica’s office down at the far, opposite end of the hall.

Phil and Lem came bustling up behind him from the direction of the elevators, looking frightened and strained, which Ted took little notice of because they very often looked like that.

“Ted,” said Lem.

“Ted,” said Phil.

Ted continued proofreading the reports as he went, tossing his hand up at the boys to wave them off.

“Can’t right now, guys, I have to get these to Veronica so she can rush them to Chet,” he explained, not taking his eyes off the sheets and files stacked in his arms. “I’m in a big rush, so it’ll have to wait.”

“Ted,” Phil insisted.

“Ted,” Lem insisted.

“Not now,” Ted warned, and quickened his walk so that it was just one step below a jog.

Phil and Lem glanced at each other and uneasily noted the fact that Ted had used the Tone with them. The Tone meant business, it meant _leave me alone_ (but in the nicest way possible, because it was Ted) and it meant that whatever required Ted’s attention must’ve been really, truly, very important because he wouldn’t have used the Tone otherwise.

Lem pushed his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose, his eyebrows scrunching with concern. Phil pressed his lips together tight and his cheeks puffed out slightly while his eyes widened, causing him to slightly resemble a puffer fish. The pair hesitated a full 2.5 seconds before they silently decided at the same time that this was simply too important to wait.

“Ted, we heard the Tone,” Phil ventured nervously.

“And we can see you’re _very_ busy,” interjected Lem quickly.

“But we must risk your wrath this day—it’s too important not to.”

Ted heaved an aggravated sigh but otherwise didn’t respond, still fiercely attempting to proofread the reports. He just needed five more minutes. _Five_. The crisis the boys were having, whatever it was, would have to wait.

“Ted?” Lem tried, his lips forming into a small ‘O’ of uncertainty on the question mark.

“Ted?” Phil tried, leaning backwards a tiny bit as if expecting a physical blow.

“ _Guys._ ”

Ted was standing steps from Veronica’s office as he reluctantly turned to face his geniuses, trying in vain not to be irritated with them. His eyes darted to check the time on the clock mounted on the blandly colored wall nearby. He had less than five minutes to go over the reports with Veronica and get them up to Chet before the man left on holidays for three weeks.

“Look, unless it’s the apocalypse—”

“It’s a zombie,” Phil blurted out in a big rush of air, like a balloon that had suddenly been untied.

Ted stopped and he was ninety percent sure he heard fifty percent of Phil’s statement wrong, and it was not the fifty percent he liked.

“ _What?_ ”

“It’s a zombie,” Lem repeated, as he shifted from foot to foot. “In the lab.”

Ted stared. He _so_ did not have time for this. And they could not be actually serious. Even though they looked pretty serious.

“How?” Ted managed, because he couldn’t seem to manage anything else. Then before they answered, he added, “Can it wait?”

Phil whimpered.

Ted decided that meant _no_.

“We were testing the Long Term Wrinkle-Free Regenerative Night Cream Serum for Women Over Thirty,” explained Lem, hands twisting before him. “After Management said they wanted to make it smell nicer?”

“And Chet demanded the cream be compatible with men _and_ woman,” Phil chimed in. “And Veronica requested that it work on more skin than just the skin on her face. Although she has the _nicest_ skin I have _ever_ beheld and I can’t imagine she would _ever_ need a regenerative cream.”

Ted pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and sucked in a slow, deep breath to calm his rising blood pressure. He wasn’t one to lose his temper, but the guys were seriously trying every last scrap of patience he had today, and, after the way the last couple weeks had gone, he had very little left.

Not to mention Rose’s mother had swept in yesterday morning, ready to whisk Rose away for an unprecedented _two_ weeks, and he could hardly say no once Rose started her unique brand of not-quite-begging pleading. She promised to get her homework from her friends via email, and he frankly _could_ use a couple days without worrying about her to complete all these reports...

But that was hardly the point. The point was that Rose’s mother had just _showed_ _up_ , with only ten minutes’ warning via a hasty cell phone call before breakfast. She flounced in, expectant and overly cheerful, bearing gifts and bursting with smiles and absurd positivity and ice cream while Ted had had to stand there grimacing and trying not to glower for Rose’s sake.

Lem and Phil were still going as Ted forcibly surfaced from his train of thought before it crashed.

“Patricia wanted a sample to take home,” Lem said with exasperation. “Then I said she couldn’t, not until we were sure it was safe for human consumption—”

“Not literal _consumption_ ,” Phil clarified.

“No, of course not, it’s a figure of speech,” Lem continued, unperturbed. “Dr. Bhamba was working out equations—”

“Guys. _Deadline_.” Ted snapped and pointed with irritation at the clock on the wall, ticking away precious seconds he didn’t have to spare. “Skipping to the _point_?”

Lem nodded vigorously. “The cadaver became a zombie.”

Ted blinked. “Okay, backing up just a little so I can see _how_ we got to this point?”

“We put the cream on the cadaver,” Phil expounded. “And then it, well…” He waved his hands back and forth at shoulder level like a drowning man might. “Woke up. ‘Regenerative’ took on a _whole_ new meaning.”

Ted still felt rather in shock, and Lem helpfully proceeded to mime what exactly was apparently occurring down in the lab at that very moment. He lifted his arms straight out in front of him and curled his fingers like claws. He cocked his head to the side, rolled his eyes back into his head, let his tongue loll out of his open mouth, and groaned menacingly while taking a staggering step towards his boss.

“Okay! I got it!” Ted jumped backwards, thoroughly grossed out and alarmed.

Lem returned to normal, fixed his glasses, and offered Ted a small, sheepish grin. Phil nodded at his friend with approval, apparently finding the likeness to be a good one.

Ted’s mind was reeling. “Okay, go back down there and contain it. Take Ryan the security guard with you, get everyone out of the lab, and I’ll be down there as soon as I can.” He grabbed the handle on the door to Veronica’s office and headed inside.

Phil and Lem exchanged terrified glances then scurried off as fast as they could without running (since running had been banned following an _incident_ , after which a memo was sent about no running in the office for any reason, although that memo was frequently thrown out the window—literally and figuratively—every time an evacuation was ordered, or when it was Fajita Day).


	2. Chapter 2

Moments after he'd entered her office, Ted and Veronica opted to deal with the month-end crap over the lab crap first so they didn't catch extra new crap from Chet. They signed papers as fast as they could and sent Larry the Temp off at top speed with the stack of critical files (but, again, not at a run, since running was banned).

For some reason, Ted thought Veronica would be surprised by the news that a zombie was wreaking havoc in the lab. She was not.

"What's your point, Ted?" she asked, following Ted's account of what his geniuses had relayed to him.

"That…there is a literal flesh-eating zombie down in our laboratory?"

"Are we sure it's eating flesh?" inquired Veronica. "And whose flesh?"

Ted's eyes went wide with shock and he sputtered, "Does it _matter_ whose flesh it is?"

"Have your gremlins cornered it yet?"

"I sent them to get Ryan and to try and get it under control, if that's what you're asking," Ted gestured over his shoulder at the door, as if doing so gave her some form of proof that Lem and Phil were indeed working on managing the situation.

"Well," Veronica lifted her feet, wrapped in beige stilettos, up onto her desk. "Keep me posted. You can walk away—"

"Don't say 'tall.'"

Veronica blinked at him, and he couldn't decide if she was offended he'd cut her off or confused that he'd known how she was going to end that sentence.

Even if Veronica wasn't feeling particularly distressed by this situation, Ted certainly was. He didn't like scary movies, but he'd seen enough (or, well, read about enough) to know how quickly zombie situations could get out of hand.

_God_ , he thought. _The fact that I am literally even thinking about this…_

"Veronica," he said, more sharply and scared-sounding than he'd intended. "Shouldn't we, I don't know, _evacuate_?"

Veronica wrinkled her nose slightly. "You think it's necessary?"

Ted nearly balked at this but managed to restrain himself. Instead he chose to swallow hard, then tactfully answer her query.

"You _do_ know what zombies are, right? And how they make more zombies?"

"Of course I do, Ted," Veronica rolled her eyes. "I'm not an invalid."

 

~

 

Ted was racing as fast as could (without running) when Linda caught up with him.

"Don't you just love a good evacuation?" she said cheerfully. "We haven't had one in two and a half weeks—I was starting to wonder. Also, I was bored. Today's a good day for once, it's all warm and sunny out."

She hurried to keep up with Ted's fast pace.

"Linda, I don't have time to chat, sorry," he said distractedly. "Go evacuate with everybody."

"Are you getting the guys? Did the lab PA system go down again? They _really_ need to get that fixed in those bottom levels, because how else are people supposed to know about these evacuations?"

" _Linda_ , go evacuate, will you?" Ted snapped.

"Ooh, sor-ry, Mr. Important." Linda stopped walking and made a face at Ted's retreating back.

 

~

 

While Veronica saw to the evacuation, Ted hastened to the elevators (because, serious though the situation was, it was not quite serious enough to convince him to take the stairs with the mutant spider nest). The moment he stepped off the elevators on the lab floor, he felt his heart leap into his throat. He skittered to a stop in the middle of the lobby, his heart racing.

The air was filled with smoke and smelled rancid, though it wasn't clear if that was something from the lab or the smell of the cadaver-turned-zombie (the lab smelled rancid a little too often, so it was hard to be sure). There was alarms blaring, people screaming, general crashing and banging, and something that was either a cat or Dr. Bhamba wailing in agony.

Suddenly, the doors to the lab blew open with such force they were left hanging off their tracks and Ted stumbled backwards. Lem and Phil emerged at dead sprint, screaming for Ted to _RUUUN!_ He caught a glimpse of something blue-ish, green-ish, and rotting-ish before he took off for the stairs (the situation was now _definitely_ serious enough to risk the spiders), with the two geniuses and a handful of other employees hot on his heels.

He pounded up the steps so fast that it wasn't until he was blazing a trail past his own office that he actually remembered the spiders and gave himself a quick shake and brushed his shoulders instinctively. The floor was deserted except for Veronica, who was holding open an elevator door, casually waiting for them.

"Was that _your_ girly scream echoing all the way up the stairwell?" she asked calmly.

Ted was panting too hard to reply, but shook his head. He clambered into the elevator and glanced at Patricia, who was red-faced and sweating, and she turned her gaze to Phil. Phil bunched his shoulders to his ears in embarrassment, grimacing sheepishly.

Once the elevator was full, Veronica let go of the door and pressed the Main Floor button. She surveyed the terrified, panting group with a sort of detached interest for a few seconds. It was at that moment that Ted realized instead of running up all those stairs to his office level, they should have only run up three flights to the ground floor. Then again, with a zombie attacking, he hadn't exactly been in the clearest state of mind.

"Is…everybody," Ted gulped air. He _so_ was not in good enough shape to run for his life up twelve flights of stairs. "Else…out?"

Veronica nodded. "Sent them on their merry way as soon as you headed downstairs." She eyed Dr. Bhamba who was drenched with sweat, possibly blood, and something green and smelly. "How'd it go in the lab?"

Ted regarded Lem and Phil, and only then realized that Lem was holding a metal baseball bat, while Phil was clutching a potted plant and a whisk.

"We tried," Phil explained, having caught most of his breath. "We went back down there, just as you told us to, and it was ripping the lab _apart_." He shuddered at the memory.

"It had already taken two of the temps," said Lem. "They were turning into zombies too. One in the face, one in the…well. Not in the face."

Ted didn't want to know.

"I had it cornered," Dr. Bhamba piped up, sounding significantly less cocky than usual, despite his confident statement.

"Ryan pulled his gun and tried to shoot it," Lem continued. "And we ran."

"But it got past Ryan," said Phil squeakily and Ted felt his stomach drop.

_Ryan has a wife,_ he thought sickly. _And a little kid._ Aloud, Ted asked, "Did he…?"

Ryan wasn't in the elevator with them, so he knew the answer before it came, but it still made him want to crumble to his knees when Dr. Bhamba answered.

"It chewed his arm," he supplied helpfully. "Right down the bone!"

Ted felt woozy and Phil winced, while Lem gave Bhamba a _whack_ with his bat.

"What? That's what happened!" Bhamba rubbed his arm and scowled at Lem.

The elevator had reached the ground level, so Ted, Veronica, and the six surviving lab employees disembarked and headed outside to the parking lot where the rest of the building's workers were gathered in the brilliant sunlight. Veronica walked with purpose, while the lab techs skittered and glanced back anxiously. Ted wobbled at first before forcefully pulling himself together and staying just a step behind Veronica. True, he had _no_ clue what the hell they were supposed to do next, but Veronica looked like she did, and that was enough for him.

_Maybe there's, like, an extermination squad or something,_ he thought as they crossed the sidewalks and grass to the parking lot. _Like with termites, but for zombies._

He broke off from the pack when he spotted Linda and made his way over to her.

"There you are," Linda greeted with a big smile, choosing to forgive him for biting her head off earlier (and wasn't _that_ a poor choice of words). "I was wondering where you'd gotten to. Well," she added, shrugging. "Mostly hoping you weren't dead."

Ted's laugh was abrupt and extremely forced. "Dead! Hah! Why would I be dead! No reason to be dead!"

Linda recoiled a little bit at the noise coming from him and raised her eyebrow. "Because this is Veridian Dynamics and we were evacuated? You _do_ remember the gas leak and the fire, don't you? And the _other_ gas leak, the _other_ fire, the thing with the yak…"

"Nope, not dead," Ted said vehemently. "Fine. Very fine. So fine, I couldn't be finer. The _finest_ , in fact!"

"And weird," Linda frowned. "So weird you almost couldn't be weirder. What's going on? Do you know why we were evacuated?"

"Huh? Yes. No. Maybe. Ask Veronica."

At that moment, Veronica was talking animatedly into her cell phone (well, animatedly for Veronica) while the distraught and ominously spattered lab employees huddled nearby in the shade of the gigantic art installation in front of Veridian. Linda squinted in their direction.

"Why is Phil holding a whisk?"

"I...I actually have no idea," Ted answered truthfully.

Now that he was in the sunlight and not in the Lobby of Death outside the lab, Ted was feeling calmer by the second, and it was a lot easier to believe the whole thing was not nearly as bad as it seemed. Minus the part where Ryan the security guard was a zombie, as well as two other people and the original cadaver-zombie.

But Ted was good at not thinking about it, or at least good _while_ not thinking about it. Until Linda started interrogating him again.

She returned her gaze to her friend and crossed her arms over her chest. "But you _do_ know why they're all covered in a variety of gross-looking stains?"

"There was an accident," he hedged, not meeting her eyes.

"Obviously."

"I'm going to check how things are coming with Veronica."

"Ted."

"Yup, later Linda!"

"Don't walk away from me, Crisp, I'm not done with you!"

He walked away anyways. Ted started weaving through the crowd to reach his boss, desperately hoping she'd come up with a plan. How _were_ you supposed to deal with _zombies_? As he strode past and between co-workers, he overheard snatches of their conversations.

"Is it really a zombie?" Rick asked with unnecessary excitement and volume. "Bob said they evacuated us because there's a _zombie_."

Debbie rolled her eyes. "A literal horror movie zombie is virtually scientifically impossible."

"Did it rip someone's face off?" Sheila inquired. "I heard it ripped someone's face off."

"I wish Jenkins were here," someone groaned softly. "Jenkins always knew what to do."

Ted reached Veronica just as she hung up the phone.

"Well?"

Veronica shrugged. "Apparently, the military doesn't get involved unless it's one hundred people or more. Legal says we can't legally put everyone back into the building until the situation is over, even if it would get the army involved faster." She sighed in a long-suffering way.

It shouldn't have surprised Ted that Veronica had considered letting the zombies make a hundred more so she could get the big guns aboard, but it did. He neatly side-stepped the implication before it bothered him too deeply.

"So what do we do, then?" Ted raked his fingers through his neatly styled hair (which was feeling a lot less neatly styled after the whole running-for-his-life-and-sweating-a-lot-because-of-that thing).

Before Veronica had the chance to answer, Linda appeared beside Ted.

"Okay, people are saying that there are _actual_ zombies in the building," Linda said, then snorted. "I mean, what's next, a werewolf in Accounting?"

Veronica levelled her gaze at her and replied very seriously, "We don't joke about that, Linda."

Linda ceased giggling under breath immediately and opened her mouth in confusion and surprise.

"Veronica," Ted prodded before Linda could get going on werewolves. "What do we do? I mean, people are talking, and rumors are flying and pretty soon the talking and flying rumors are going to be screaming and blind panic."

"Oh God," Veronica moaned. "It's the Octo-Chicken all over again."

"No, this is _definitely_ worse," Ted assured her.

"Wait," Linda glanced between her two superiors. "There _are_ zombies in the building?"

Ted grit his teeth and hissed, "Say it louder next time."

"Sorry," she winced. "But you don't mean like _real_ zombies, right? Like the whole _ooo, augh, BRAINS_ zombies, right?"

"As opposed to the _wee, yum, RAINBOWS_ variety?" Ted returned.

Linda glared then softened, amused again. "No, you're just messing with me, I knew it. Hah, good one, Ted." She laughed and lightly punched his shoulder.

Ted and Veronica weren't smiling at all, however, and it only took a few seconds for Linda's smile to slide off her pretty features.

"Oh my God," her voice quivered. "This is the apocalypse, isn't it? Veridian caused the apocalypse... _oh_ my _GOD_."

"No," said Veronica. "That's not for another eight years, at least."


	3. Chapter 3

Maybe fifteen minutes later (though, frankly, Ted hadn't been keeping track), an alarm sounded from the main building. Veronica cursed under her breath and started madly dialing her phone. The employees in the parking lot exchanged worried looks, and the murmur of concerned chatter rose. The scientists, who were still banded together by the statue, left the shelter of the shade to stand closer to Ted, Linda, and Veronica. Linda eyed them (or rather the crusted goo on their lab coats) warily, and Ted found himself rocking back and forth on his heels anxiously.

" _What?_ " Veronica shouted into her phone then snapped it shut with unnecessary force. She whirled on the group and, in unison, everyone took an involuntary step backwards, except Ted, who was used to her whirling, though the fire in her eyes _was_ pretty scary.

"How did they get out?" she demanded.

Phil squeaked and ducked behind Lem, who was hugging the baseball bat to his chest like a shield.

"Who?" Bhamba queried and Ted was tempted to thump him.

"The _zombies_ , you idiot." Veronica hissed. "Those alarms you hear are because emergency exits and windows have been smashed open and there are now a number of zombies on the loose."

" _What_?!" Ted and Linda exclaimed in unison.

"Didn't you _lock_ the lab behind you?" Veronica inquired incredulously of the geniuses and techs. "Do you not understand what _containment_ means?"

"I was trying not to die!" Phil cried shrilly.

Ted remembered the lab doors being very unclose-able when he'd turned and bolted for the stairs.

"The building was in lockdown," said Lem, his voice shaking. "We figured things would be _locked_ _down_."

"Oh no, we only ordered an evacuation, not a lockdown," Veronica explained evenly. "They're two different things. Lockdowns cost more."

"How do they—?"

"Oh, and I almost forgot. Legal says we're not supposed to use the term 'lockdown' anymore. We have to say 'lockup' because 'lockdown' is racist."

Ted blinked and shook his head. " _How_ is term 'lockdown' racist?"

"Lock _up_ , Ted," Veronica corrected without explaining why legal felt 'lockdown' was a racist term (or she also didn't understand why, which Ted was betting on). "Anyways, back to the zombie issue."

A blood-curdling scream sounded from the far right, and all heads turned. Ted felt the bottom of his stomach drop out and the hairs on his neck stand up. In an instant, everything was chaos and panic. The zombies had grown in number since the scientists had left the building. In addition to the original cadaver, the two temps, and Ryan, there were also now two janitors, Jerome the food-taster, Lucy from the lab, and three people Ted didn't recognize. (One of them might've been an archivist who worked in the basement but he couldn't be sure, as he'd always thought their existence was merely a rumor). That brought the total number of zombies crossing the parking lot at not-too-slow a pace to a whopping, extraordinarily terrifying _eleven._

People ran for their cars, the street, in every direction. People shouted, people screamed, people cried and hollered. Ted grabbed Linda's hand and ran with the rest of them, and though the other scientists scattered in the chaos, Phil dropped his potted plant and grabbed onto Lem who grabbed onto Linda, and together the four of them fought their way through the crowd of horrified, panicked employees.

Suddenly there was a different tone to some of the screams and Ted looked back, immediately wishing he hadn't. The zombies had latched onto some victims and were...well, creating more zombies. He saw Ryan chomp down on Janet, he could see the temps cornering Rick, and Jerome was howling as he chased Debbie.

Phil stumbled and fell, losing his grip on his whisk and on Lem. He gave a short wail and then Lem shouted for Ted, who glanced over his shoulder again to see Phil on the pavement clutching his knee a few feet away.

"Go on without me!" he bellowed through the din. "I'll be alright!"

Phil was being buffeted and knocked about by the crowd and even with his heart pounding in fear, Ted had to roll his eyes. Ted grabbed Linda by the shoulder and shoved his car keys in her hand. "Take Lem, get to my car. Right behind you."

She opened her mouth to argue and he quelled her protest with the look on his face (a really, really intense and scary one he'd frankly never had cause to use before). She nodded quickly, yanked on Lem's arm and took off.

" _Phiiiiiiiill…_ " Lem's cry of despair trailed off into the distance.

Ted reached for Phil and hauled him up.

"Don't you dare die for me, Ted Crisp!" Phil cried dramatically, tears in his eyes.

"You need to cut back on the hero movies!" Ted retorted.

At that moment, there was a gap in the crowd and, speaking of movies, Ted suddenly felt very much like he was _in_ one. A horror movie. A horrible, gross, evil horror movie— _exactly_ the kind he never, ever watched because they gave him nightmares (though he would never openly admit to the nightmares part—he'd just say something all grown-up like, "I don't prefer that genre" or "Excuse me, look at the time, I have to be anywhere but here"). Time slowed down and his breath left him like he'd been walloped with a wrecking ball.

One of the temps had its jaw clamped around Rick's throat, blood trailing down its cracked and scarred chin. Janet was getting to her feet, all bloody and bruised, white-eyed and _rotting_. There was blood on the pavement, splattered like paint on nearby cars, on the grass, on the other zombies...

There were a lot more than eleven now.

Time restarted and Ted pelted forwards, harder than he'd ever run in his life. His skin crackled with terror and adrenaline. He had a solid grip on Phil, who either was keeping up with him or who was kind of being dragged along, but Ted couldn't think about anything except _getting the hell away_. He tore through the crowd that by this point was getting thinner and farther away as everyone ran for their lives. He glimpsed his car up ahead, Linda in the driver's seat, eyes wide with fear, and she gestured wildly for him to hurry the moment she spotted him. Lem was in the back seat and started beating on the window with his fists, face split in a massive grin, as his mouth formed the word _PHIL_ over and over.

They reached the car, and Phil clambered into the back with Lem. Ted practically launched himself into the passenger seat.

" _Drive!_ " he screamed at Linda, who was ready and waiting with the car already in gear.

Instead of backing up to get out of the parking lot, however, Linda just floored it, and the car slammed over the parking space marker and onto the grass. She wove expertly around the sprinting people, between a set of trees, and past the picnic table like she was born to do it, and the car banged onto the street. She wrenched the wheel and yanked the emergency brake, the tires screeched, and they were off again.

They made it to Ted's house in one piece and in a quarter of the time it usually took him to get home (though, in all fairness, it wasn't rush hour, he didn't usually drive like a stunt driver on his regular commute, and he normally wasn't attempting to escape a scary hoard of zombies).

 

~

 

Then they tried to leave New Hillvalleydale. This was where the zombies were created, and the more distance Ted put between him and the creatures, the better everything would be. He was sure of it.

The moment they arrived at Ted's house, he instructed them to grab anything useful and put it in the trunk of his car. He amended that statement to "just grab some non-perishable food and tools or something" when Phil and Lem started debating whether couch cushions counted as useful or not. He ordered Linda to collect some blankets and towels, then batteries and flashlights from the basement. He stepped in to make Phil and Lem shut up about the silverware and to empty the pantry into a rubber bin for easy transport.

 _If we can get out of the city,_ Ted thought irrationally as he grabbed shirts and clothes at random and shoved them into a suitcase. _We'll be okay._

Less than five minutes later, they were in the car and Ted, normally a careful driver, was blazing down the residential roads. He felt on fire and eerily focused, even though he could feel his insides were trembling and gooey with terror, and three separate times his passengers screamed as they nearly got into an accident.

"Maybe Linda should drive?" Lem suggested meekly, his grip white-knuckled on the seat.

"It's okay, Ted's a superhero. He can do this," said Phil, though he had his eyes shut and Ted could hear the doubt in Phil's unnaturally high-pitched tone.

By the time they reached the freeway, however, Ted guessed the news about the zombies must have been all over the news. The road was completely jammed with cars and panicked, frightened people. People were trying to drive in the ditches and on the shoulders; many of them grabbed only the essentials and were running between cars, trying to escape any way they could. He suddenly envied the people on bikes and wished he was one of them (which was new; normally, he often wanted to run bikers off the road).

Ted didn't know what to do. When armored tanks appeared in the distance, making people turn around and go home, he _really_ didn't know what else to do, except what he was told. They sat for a long time in silence, everyone alone with their anxious thoughts watching cars in various directions turning around, until a massive man in army fatigues approached their car.

"You can go home, sir," he said, his voice deep and extremely authoritative like the insurance commercial guy that Linda liked. "The military is here and the situation is under control."

"It is?" Ted, the only one able to find his voice, replied.

"Please proceed as soon as you are able to do so, calmly and safely." He nodded at the car-full, gave the roof a tap with his hand, and then carried on to the next vehicle.

"Well," Ted breathed. "That's good news."

"So...we're okay?" Linda asked tentatively. "I mean, it's okay? They got the zombies?"

He forced himself to smile at her and she seemed momentarily relaxed.

"I knew the army would fix this," Lem said with a pleased smile. "Those guys." He nodded in admiration.

Phil didn't look convinced, and, though Ted was putting on a brave face for Linda, he felt more like Phil looked. The man's eyebrows were still crinkled with nerves, and he met Ted's eyes in the rear-view mirror, seeking reassurance. Ted glanced away, because he couldn't give it to him. Phil didn't say anything, though, and simply stared out the window.

 

~

 

Once they were back at Ted's house, everything felt creepily normal. It made the hairs on Ted's arm stand up, though he couldn't explain why. The army was patrolling streets in tanks and his house was a mess from earlier when they'd been tearing it apart to pack, but other than that, nothing was technically _wrong_.

 _They said it was okay_ , he reminded himself and tried to shake the unease roiling in his gut. He supposed it was just that he couldn't stop replaying the moment when Rick had his throat ripped open in the parking lot. Or Janet with her dead eyes, stumping forward covered in blood.

"You can all stay here tonight," he announced. "You're welcome to go home, but I thought...if you don't feel like being alone, you can all stay here."

Phil and Lem nodded gratefully in unison and wordlessly went to unpack the car, now that the world wasn't ending like they thought. Linda was still unnaturally pale and shaky, but she smiled and thanked him.

"Crazy day, huh?" she offered in a weak, exhausted voice.

"Yeah," Ted agreed and couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Is it all right if I take Rose's room?"

"Sure. Did you want me to tuck you in?" he teased.

She almost laughed. "I'm sure I can manage. Thanks for the offer—maybe I'll take you up on it some other day when we're camping at your house after a zombie apocalypse near-miss."

"Oh, God, please let there not be a next time."

"Well, it _is_ Veridian."

They laughed, and it felt really good after so much fear and madness. Linda headed upstairs to bed right away despite it only being a little after eight, though Ted admittedly was pretty tired himself—running from zombies will do that to you, he supposed.

Phil and Lem were too wound up to sleep, so they put _Star Wars_ on (something safe and familiar with no chance of zombie-reminders, they assured each other). Despite feeling fatigued, Ted settled onto the couch beside them with a cup of water and allowed himself to be drawn into the struggle of the Rebel Alliance against the Empire.

 

~

 

A few hours later, Veronica showed up on his doorstep. This probably should have surprised Ted, but somehow it did not.

Still, he had to ask, "Veronica, what are you doing here?"

"I came to protect you," she replied, as if it were the most obvious reason in the world.

Ted chuckled. "Veronica, I don't need 'protecting.'"

She raised her eyebrow at him. "How many weapons do you have?"

"Weapons?"

"Yes. How many?"

Ted stared.

"Guns, Ted. Weapons. Machine guns, pistols, revolvers, AK-47s, Glocks, shotguns, rifles." When he didn't immediately reply, she began rattling items off at top speed. "Flamethrowers, grenades, bazookas, chains, maces, spears, javelins, axes, throwing stars, staves, bows, arrows, harpoons, knives, machetes, katanas, swords, nunchucks, smoke bombs, blow guns, Tasers…?"

The look on Ted's face was a cross between awe and alarm.

"That's what I thought."

She turned on her heel and returned to her car. Moments later, she reappeared with an armload of objects. She made several trips back to her car, proceeding to bring in bins, containers, packages, cases and more. Twice Ted offered to help her haul whatever it was that she was hauling—"Supplies, Ted, they're supplies"—but she declined, asking him if he could make her something to eat.

Ted headed to the kitchen, feeling extraordinarily awkward and decidedly unmanly.

When he brought her a plate of pasta and sauce in the dining room a little while later, there was an alarmingly vast array of weapons spread across the table and Ted was utterly speechless once again. He watched her methodically clean a gun and stepped forward hesitantly, not sure if he was impressed or terrified (or probably, definitely, both in flipping-flopping amounts).

He set the plate down between two enormous rifles and had to sit down because his knees felt a little rubbery and he didn't want her to notice.

"Veronica…" he began. Paused. Swallowed. Timidly continued, "But they said it was okay."

She didn't look at him. "Do you believe it's okay?"

He swallowed hard again, thinking of the military man who'd spoken to them on the freeway. Thought of Rick.

"No?"

She deftly reassembled the pistol in her hand, set it aside, and reached for the next one.

"Zombies are hard to kill, Ted." The way she said it made it sound like she had experience with this sort of thing. "You saw what happened in the parking lot at Veridian. If the army can't contain the things, well…" She let the sentence hang, and Ted wished she hadn't.

"I just like to be prepared. The boy scout saying _is_ 'Be Prepared' after all." She cocked her head to the side thoughtfully. "Isn't that also the motto of a Disney villain? That's odd."

"It was a song, not a motto, and since when were you a Boy Scout?" Ted smirked a little, appreciating the way she was unintentionally lightening the mood.

"Since always, Ted," she replied, almost irritated that he was unaware of that fact.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Boy Scout. Me."

"But you're a girl."

"Oh, you noticed?" she quipped. "Yes, I am, and I _was_ a Girl Scout. But I was _also_ a Boy Scout. And an Eagle Scout."

"Veronica, you can't have been—"

"Yes, I can have been. I did, I was. I'm an equal opportunist, Ted, always have been."

Ted was unsure what to do with this information and was mostly wondering if she was completely screwing with him. For the time being, however, he let the issue drop, instead turning his attention back to the startling assortment of weapons Veronica had scattered across his dining room. His eyes landed on the untouched plate of food.

"Hey, you better eat that," he said. "I slaved over a hot stove for like, fifteen minutes."

"I don't eat carbs."

The smile on Ted's face fell. "Oh. Um. Did you want something else?"

The corner of Veronica's mouth quirked into an amused smile. "You're so easy to manipulate." She cleared a spot before her, pushing rags and ammo and pieces of gun out of her way, then reached for the plate.

"You're mean," Ted returned easily, like everything was normal and this was just another lunch break at the office. Like the company they worked for did not just almost potentially cause a zombie apocalypse.

By the time the guys had finished _Empire Strikes Back_ , Ted was feeling more exhausted than tired and Veronica had finished arranging and cleaning her weapons. He told her that they should get some sleep, and she agreed.

Lem immediately offered Veronica the guest bedroom, and she tossed a rare, grateful half-smile his way before taking her bag down the hall, the blade of an axe poking out by the zipper. Lem beamed after her for a moment before he realized he no longer had a place to sleep. Ted assured him he had a foam mattress that he would set up on the floor of the living room for his friend, and that perked Lem back up.

"It'll be like a real live sleepover!" he grinned, and Phil clapped his hands excitedly.

"I have _always_ wanted a real live sleepover!" he agreed breathlessly.

Ted narrowed his eyes at the pair, a question on his lips, before deciding the hour was too late and the day already too weird to bother asking them to explain. Instead he handed them a stack of blankets and sheets and bid them goodnight.

Ted headed to his room, shut off the lights, and collapsed into bed. It took a long time to fall asleep—he kept seeing Rick, and the occasional rumble of tanks outside didn't help things either—but eventually he drifted off.


	4. Chapter 4

Ted jolted awake when an incredible noise ripped through his home. Disoriented, he tumbled out of bed, tangled in the sheets, and tried to blink the cobwebs from his brain as his senses struggled to catch up. _Was that...gunfire?_

He yanked open his door, tossing the sheets aside, still in the thin tee-shirt and boxer shorts he’d slept in. Linda came pounding down the hallway, terrified, wearing her borrowed pink pajama tank and shorts. 

“What’s going on?” he demanded, heart in his throat. 

“They’re here—they’re back!” said Linda, her voice shrill and trembling. “It’s not over!” 

Ted thought he might throw up. 

Downstairs, he heard several screams and another round of gunfire _rat-ta-tat-tat_. He grabbed Linda’s hand and bolted down the steps to his living room, which was utter chaos. Veronica was standing on the coffee table, machine gun at her hip, shooting at the line of corpses trudging and groaning across his lawn. The front window was shattered, the furniture was in tatters and two headless zombies lay twitching on the rug. Phil was whimpering as he barricaded the door, clutching a hatchet he clearly didn’t know how to wield, while Lem was running back and forth with various pieces of furniture and trying to close off other points of entry into the house. 

“Grab a weapon, kids!” Veronica hollered and fired at the zombies approaching the house. “We are under attack!” 

_They said it was okay,_ Ted thought helplessly, his body seized with panic. _The army came and it was under control and they said it was okay and why did I let myself think for a second it was okay_ … 

This was the _very opposite_ of “under control” (and maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him that everything had gotten infinitely worse instead of better, but it did). 

_SMASH_. 

“They’re coming in!” Lem screeched, pointing in the direction of the kitchen. 

“Ted!” Veronica yelled over her shoulder. “Pick up a god damn weapon and _help me_!” 

Ted was sweating with fear but something in Veronica’s tone broke through the fog of panic clinging to him, and he was able to force his body to respond to his commands. He raced to the bottom of the steps, dashed to the dining room and grabbed the first gun he saw, a moderate-sized black thing that looked like it could do some damage. He had no idea what to do with it but hastened back to the living room anyway. 

“Veronica,” he began, vainly trying not to let his fear bleed _quite_ so much into one word. 

“It’s ready and loaded, Crisp!” she snapped, eyes blazing as she fired out the front window again. “Just aim and pull the trigger!” 

His limbs felt like jelly encased in something brittle as he jerkily thundered into the kitchen. A zombie was awkwardly trying to climb in the high window over the sink that it had broken through, and Ted aimed, blinking away the sweat trailing into his eyes. 

_Shoot_ , he thought but his fingers wouldn’t squeeze. _Just pull. Press down. Pull the trigger. Shoot it. SHOOT IT, TED._

But his hands were shaking so hard the gun was wobbling all over the place and even while every part of him _knew_ he _had_ to shoot the rotting, bloody thing struggling into his kitchen, Ted was paralyzed with panic because _this was really happening_ and _oh God I’ve never shot anyone what do I do_. 

“Ted!” Linda screamed behind him and he was so startled by her sudden voice that his hand twitched, and the gun fired. 

The bullet missed the zombie and splintered the window sill, and the zombie moaned loud and long, its jaw hanging open, bloody drool trailing down his chin. It was fully through the window now, clambering over the sink, and landing on its feet on the floor with a heavy thud. 

“Ted, oh God— _do something_!” Linda shouted. 

The zombie took a step forward, and, hollering like a crazy man, Ted finally started shooting and couldn’t stop. Some of the bullets hit the thing, splatting and cracking and ripping through the molding flesh, while others flew far past where Ted was supposed to be aiming, peppering the wallpaper and tile of his kitchen. When the clip was empty, the zombie fell forward with a tremendous crash, having received enough shots to the head to render it immobile. 

Ted was heaving for breath like he’d run a marathon, and he was _definitely_ going to throw up this time. His legs gave out and he landed painfully on his knees. He glanced up, remembering Linda shouting at him, and saw her standing there holding a gun too, still aimed at the window. She looked as bad as he felt, arms quivering and face white with terror. 

“I—I couldn’t,” she stammered. “He was coming—she—it—and I _couldn’t_.” She shook her head and tears rolled down her cheeks. “Ted, that was a _person_ —how are we supposed to—“ 

Ted clenched his jaw and nodded, wrestling down the queasy feeling in his stomach. “I know. Me too.” 

Their tiny reprieve was swiftly over, however, as a pair of zombies appeared at the window, growling and snarling. Linda screamed, and from the living room, it didn’t sound like the others were faring much better. Lem and Phil were wailing as the sound of wood splintering joined their cries, Veronica was shouting, there was something like an explosion, and then the scientists appeared behind Linda, frantic and babbling about zombies in every direction. 

Ted’s gun was empty and useless, so he grabbed Linda’s and shot at the zombies climbing into the kitchen, doing his best to entirely remove his head from the situation. 

_It’s just like Call of Duty,_ he thought, his hands still vibrating of their own accord around the grip of the weapon. _It’s not real, it’s just a game. Just shoot. You’re just having a nightmare because of the stuff in the parking lot yesterday. Just shoot and survive and you’ll wake up._

He didn’t have to believe it deeply, he just had to believe it for the moment, and the moment after. 

Then Veronica was in the kitchen doorway with them, and the two zombies slumped over the sinks dropping their arms, the life gone out of them (but if they were undead, could you really call it _life_? Ted wasn’t sure how to think about that and chose not to). She shoved a bag at Linda, and a random assortment of weapons at the two scientists. 

“There’s dozens of them,” Veronica said, hastily reloading the gun in her arms. “If we stay here, they’ll have us surrounded in no time and take us out one by one.” 

Ted felt an ugly sensation of dread steal over him. “Veronica…” 

“You take these, you go to the guest bedroom on the north side,” she instructed. “You get out and you don’t look back. Find somewhere safe, and stay there.” 

“ _Veronica_ ,” Ted tried again, panic flooding his chest again because he could feel exactly where she was going with this. 

She ignored him. “I’ll stay here and hold them off.” 

Linda stuttered out some high-pitched protest and Lem and Phil started babbling about _unnecessary sacrifice_ and Ted locked his eyes on Veronica’s and shook his head, trying to convey every emotion he was feeling because this was completely insane and she was the only one who knew how to handle these weapons and he _could not survive this without her_. 

“See you soon, Crisp.” 

She turned on her heel and marched back to the living room before they could stop her. Lem and Linda called out for her in unison, Ted reached out to catch her arm and missed, and then they were out of time. There were now _three_ zombies crawling in the kitchen window (one of them, Ted noted with a severe wave of nausea, had been his neighbor across the street, Mrs. Blubridge) over top of their dead companions, and there was the sound of pounding, clawing fists on the outside walls. 

The last thing in the world Ted wanted to do was leave Veronica, so he ran for the living room, where—she hadn’t been exaggerating—he could see dozens of zombies on his front lawn in various states of alive-ness (some were riddled with holes from Veronica’s guns, some were in pieces from what he could only assume had been a grenade, some were seemingly untouched and staggering relentlessly forward). His front door was in shambles as zombies fought to overcome the furniture barricade, and Veronica was back to her perch on the coffee table, wielding a katana in one hand and one of her smaller guns in the other. She was a shining vision of pure _awesome_ , Ted thought, in the second that he had to view her, whirling and slicing and shooting and kicking. 

Then she spotted him and without breaking her focus for a second, she shouted to him, “ _Go_ , Ted! I’m not dying so you can die, too, so _get out!_ ” 

The other three were crowded behind him trying to shout for Veronica to come with them, and Ted fought against himself as he clutched Linda’s hand and ordered Phil and Lem to the guest bedroom _now_. 

“Ted, we can’t leave her!” Linda cried. 

“All for one and one for all!” Phil hollered, punching his fist into the air like a battle cry. 

“Leave no man _behiiind!_ ” Lem wailed. 

“She’s coming,” Ted promised and ushered them swiftly down the hallway, away from the noises of flesh being chopped and shot apart and Veronica grunting and _argh_ -ing with effort. He was careful not to look at Linda, because she would know he was lying, and he would lose all the resolve Veronica wanted him to have, and then he’d go back for her and die in the process. Exactly what Veronica was trying to avoid. 

Without hesitation, Ted snatched up the chair by the dresser and threw it at the window. Linda was still rambling shrilly about going back for Veronica, and Phil and Lem were panicking and generally freaking out. Ted tuned them out, wondering how in the hell he was suddenly the leader and the strong one after his little breakdown in the kitchen mere minutes ago. 

“Go!” he instructed firmly, invoking the Tone (but, like, times ten, because this was a Life or Death Situation) and the other three scrambled out the window onto the grass below. 

Ted took one look back, _this close_ to going back for Veronica anyway, and somehow the woman must’ve been omniscient because she shouted from the chaos of the living room, 

“ _Run, Crisp, run!”_

Ted swallowed down the fear shredding his insides and jumped down onto the grass with his friends. 

Zombies were tromping around the side of the house and once again, Ted gripped Linda’s hand, and they ran.

 

~

 

And so began the longest Wednesday of Ted’s life. 

(This was saying something, when he took into account the Wednesday of the Veridian Dynamics Bi-Annual Specifically General Meeting, which was usually ten and a half hours of mindless corporate speeches, presentations, and statistics, with scattered meal breaks. He blamed Harold Shoemaker, head of Offshore Accounts, who’d made a bet with the various other heads some seven years earlier about who could create the longest and driest presentation for their department. The problem was that Chet ate it up and promoted Harold, resulting in fierce competition between the other heads to be the Most Boring and Lengthy at every Bi-Annual Specifically General Meeting thereafter. The only saving grace was that this bet had yet to extend to the regular Annual General Meeting.) 

It was also probably the worst Wednesday of Ted’s life. 

(This was only _probably_ instead of _definitely_ because there was a Wednesday years ago where Ted and Rose’s mother had had their biggest and worst fight—words were screamed, pillows were thrown, tears were shed—and _that_ had finally led to The Divorce and...well, anyways, there were zombies to be dealt with now.) 

Though it wasn’t a terribly cold day, being summer and all, it wasn’t long before he and Linda were shivering. Then again, they were only wearing pajamas (the geniuses were dressed in button down shirts, proper shoes, and khakis, having clearly been up and about before the zombies attacked that morning—and wasn’t _that_ a sentence you didn’t hear every day). Ted didn’t want to steal from anyone, but he also didn’t think that trying to run on pavement barefoot and in boxer shorts was a good plan either. 

They found an unoccupied house with the front door hanging open, and Ted reluctantly led the way inside, calling out loudly all the while so as not to scare anyone who might be still inside. The house was empty, however, and the closet in the master bedroom thankfully was stuffed full of clothes. 

The pants Ted picked out were a few sizes too big, but they would do. Linda gingerly chose a plain t-shirt and khakis to replace her pink outfit, and retreated to the bathroom to change. She muttered apologies and thank-yous to the absent owner of the clothes under her breath as she exited the bedroom. 

The two scientists looked as uneasy as Ted felt about having to steal clothes, though they reassured him that it was necessary. 

“Heroes do what’s necessary,” Lem nodded sagely. “No matter the cost.” 

Phil added in a somber tone, “In times of desperation—and this is _certainly_ a desperate time—it’s okay for the hero to edge into morally gray territory.” 

“That’s right. They left these pants behind anyways, so they can’t have been that important.” Lem poked at his glasses. 

Ted frowned. “Not really helping, guys.” It also made him a bit uncomfortable that they were referring to him as _the hero_ , but then again, they tended do that on a regular, if not daily, basis. 

Once Linda and Ted were changed and ready (Ted tried really, really hard not to think about how weird it was that he was wearing _some guy_ ’sclothes), they headed back to the home’s entrance. Linda spotted a blinking cell phone abandoned on the kitchen counter (one of those fancy new “smart” phones), and after a moment of indecision, snapped it up. Her cheeks flushed bright red as she flipped it on and began typing frantically, but Ted said nothing—he was not about to judge her, given the situation they found themselves in. 

Linda checked Twitter on the pilfered phone as they ran down alleyways and streets in search of safety, and gasped softly when she clicked through to a news report posted an hour ago for the city of New Hillvalleydale. 

“What is it?” Ted asked at once. 

“Half of the city has been divided into designated Quarantine Zones,” she read shakily. “By the military. They’re trying to contain the spread of the zombies ravaging the population. Most people evacuated themselves prior to the zoning—there’s a map of Zones,” she added, then swiped her thumb across the phone to bring it up. Linda stopped dead in her tracks as the color drained from her face. “Oh my God, Ted, we’re _in_ one!” 

Based on the zombie invasion at his house that morning, and the lack of people in the surrounding neighborhoods they were encountering, this hardly surprised him—they were only a dozen or so blocks from there. She held up the phone for the others to see. Sure enough, there was a wobbly, uneven red shape drawn around Ted’s neighborhood, the one adjacent to the south, one to the west, and four to the east (one of which included the one where’d they stolen— _borrowed_ —the fancy phone from, and one that included Veridian). 

Ted swallowed the queasy feeling bubbling its way up his throat. Did this mean they were trapped with the zombies? 

“It says the army is stationed around the zone perimeters, and no one is permitted to enter or exit under any circumstances,” Linda read on. “They’re advising anyone not undead still inside the zones to remain calm and find somewhere safe until help comes.” 

The nausea was stronger now. They _were_ trapped. 

“Well, that’s very helpful,” Linda snapped, sounding a little hysterical as she shoved the phone into her pocket. 

“What do we _do_?” Phil shrieked. “I haven’t read the _Survival Guide for Zombie Apocalypses_ yet, even though it was on my Reading List, because I still haven’t finished my Book Club book yet.” Phil shook his fist at the sky. “Damn you, Book Club!” 

“I’m open to suggestions,” said Ted, glancing at the others, who were all peering at him hopefully like he had all the answers. It was the same look they gave him when the printer jammed, or there was a dispute between Patricia and Dr. Bhamba, or when they couldn’t decide what color to make the New & Improved Comfort Scissors 2000. 

The four of them fell quiet. A far off scream in the distance made Phil whimper and Linda wince. Ted felt like his skin was crawling—they shouldn’t be lingering, they shouldn’t be standing still out in the open like this... 

“I think we should do exactly what the news says,” suggested Lem, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. One of the lens was cracked from the chaos that morning. “We find some place safe and stick to it.” 

“Yeah, and where is that?” Ted countered sharply, his emotions riding close to the surface (hell, _on_ the surface—no reason to be coy about it at this point). 

Phil’s lip trembled uncertainly, Lem seemed to hunch in on himself, and Linda shot him her classic _that’s not helping_ look. 

“Sorry,” he added in a mumble. “But it’s true.” 

There was another wail in the distance, though whether it was human or undead wasn’t clear. 

Lem frowned deeply. “I wish we could get back to our lab,” he sighed. 

Phil nodded and sympathetically patted his friend on the back. “I miss it too.” 

“All those microbes...” Lem sniffled. “They hadn’t even finished gestating.” 

Ted was too used to his geniuses becoming bizarrely attached to microorganisms and viruses and lab-grown lumps of meat to take much note of the pair’s heightened emotion. That is, until they both straightened and faced each other and Phil gasped and Lem pointed and then they devolved into a completely incomprehensible stream of scientific babble. 

(Ted assumed it was scientific, anyways, because he caught the words _synthesize_ , _endoplasmic reticulum_ , and _carbo_ \- _hexo_ \- something-er-other _oxide_ ). 

Linda’s attention ping-ponged between the pair, her expression a blend of awe, confusion, and anxiety. 

“Guys,” Ted tried. Sometimes when they got going, they were rather impossible to stop, and they _so_ did not have time for a science-bro moment right now. They needed to figure out what to do next while the undead were running wild. 

Lem waved his arms around and emphasized something about _exo_ - _ada_ - _tri_ -something- _phate_ —no, Ted was giving up on trying to follow any of this. 

Phil clapped his hands together and shook them tight, bouncing on his toes like a little kid about to open presents Christmas morning. Ted turned to Linda, who was grimacing and staring like she was trying very, very hard to keep up with them and failing spectacularly. 

_“Guys,_ ” Ted tried again, invoking the Tone (but with a whole lot of _shut up, the world is ending and this is not important_ behind it—something he’d thankfully only had cause to use one other time). “Can you geek out when zombies are _not_ ravaging the city?" 

“But we can cure it!” Lem burst out, grinning so wide that it was a wonder the smile did not break his face. 

“We just realized,” said Phil, breathless with excitement. “That if we—“ 

Ted held up his hand. “Dummy Boss Speak, not Genius Speak.” 

Phil sucked in his breath like he was trying to swallow a whole lot of words, then held his breath while he recalibrated. Then in a rush as he exhaled, he said, “We think we just figured out which element turned the cadaver into the zombie.” 

“And knowing _that_ , we can synthesize a serum—a _cure_ to fix the zombies,” added Lem, in a tone as bursting with hope and enthusiasm as his lab partner. 

“And restore balance to the Force!” Phil pumped his hand in the air. “Well, _universe_. Well, city. _Well_ , Veridian.” 

“Great!” Hope swelled in Ted’s chest. His geniuses were, well, _geniuses_ and if anyone could figure this out, he had no doubt it was them. This hellish nightmare could be over so very soon...“What do you need?” 

Phil and Lem glanced at each other—the kind of uncomfortable look when there was something important that Ted needed to know but neither of them wanted to be the one to tell him. Ted felt that sudden spike of hope inside of him falter as he waited them out. 

“Our lab,” Phil squeaked at last.

The hope flickered and died. Fish out of water, air out of balloon, _pfft_. 

“Guys,” Ted began, slow and leveling his gaze at them so they would be sure not to miss a single word. “No. That’s Ground Zero. There’s no way.” 

“But Ted, we have to have all our equipment!” Lem reasoned. 

“Well, _most_ of it, anyways,” said Phil. “I mean, the first zombies kind of…” He made a mock-explosion noise with his lips. “Earlier.” 

Ted pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, even _if_ we assume there’s enough left of the lab for you guys to work something out, how do you suggest we even _get_ there, huh?” The more he spoke, the louder his voice got. “I mean, we have to cover _at least_ three or so neighborhoods to even get close, and then we’ll be _right_ at the source of the zombies. It’s bound to be absolutely _crawling_ with them—and that’s even assuming we can get _that_ far without _dying!_ ” Ted finished in a shout. 

“Maybe most of them will have moved on by now?” Lem offered hopefully. 

“What if we...” Linda began, finally piping up, then stopped to bite her lip thoughtfully. After a moment, she tentatively continued, “What if we pretended to be zombies?” 

Ted stared at her like she had sprouted three new heads and one of them looked like David Hasselhoff. Phil, however, visibly brightened. 

“That could work,” he said eagerly. “I’m sure that could work!” 

Ted imagined himself groggily stumping through a horde of zombies...and then getting eaten. 

“ _Could_ it?” Lem said skeptically. 

“I saw it in a movie once,” said Linda. “Seem to work pretty well.” 

“ _That’s_ what we’re going on?” Ted burst out, rounding on her. “That it _worked pretty well in a movie once_? Movies aren’t real, Linda—there’s all kinds of things they do in movies that don’t work in real life. There’s buses jumping freeway bridges, aliens attacking New York, miners stopping an asteroid from blowing up the Earth, or Nicolas Cage as a believable love interest!” 

“They were drillers, not miners, and I love that movie,” Linda corrected him fiercely, one finger pointed equally as fiercely at his chest. 

“You just love Ben Affleck,” Ted retorted. 

“Uh _yeah_!” said Linda. “Who _doesn’t?_ ” 

Ted sighed, because they were getting off-topic. He also sighed because he really _wanted_ to be off-topic, talking about Linda’s never-ending list of male celebrity crushes rather than attempting to formulate a plan to disguise himself as a disgusting, terrifying, brain-eating zombie in order to infiltrate Veridian’s office building. 

It was the worst plan _ever_. No, it was _worse_ than the worst plan ever. To fight their way back to the place where it all started? Dressed as zombies? It was crazy and suicidal. 

And it just might work.


	5. Chapter 5

The next step was to become said zombies. Ted was rather unsure of how to proceed (and wasn’t that just the theme of the day?), but thankfully the two scientists and Linda had plenty of ideas. 

Phil decided that they needed to be dirty, so the four of them lay down on the dusty pavement and rolled around. They procured multiple grass stains from the lawn in front of a pretty yellow house, and Lem and Linda grabbed handfuls of dark soil from the garden and took turns rubbing it all over their clothes and faces. 

Ted grimaced when Linda smeared dirt across his cheek and clumped it in his hair and she teased him that he’d never looked so good. 

Twice, while they were accumulating their layers of grime, a car screamed down the otherwise quiet residential roads. The occupants of the vehicle took no note of the foursome and tore down the following street. 

Next, as the soon-to-be fake-zombies neared a deserted playground, Lem said they needed to perfect the walk and the “voice” of an undead creature. 

“What makes you an expert?” Ted teased, crossing his arms (and trying really, _really_ hard not to think about the dirt caked under his nails and in his hair. His _hair_ , damn it!). 

Lem coughed slightly and adjusted his glasses. “I’ve actually _seen_ a zombie movie.” 

Ted conceded the point. 

The four of them stumped and limped, groaned and moaned, rolled their eyes back into their heads and let their tongues hang out of their mouths, as per Lem’s skilled direction. Ted could only imagine what the sight of them would be like to a bystander, as they stopped every few minutes for Lem to correct them, like this was How To Be A Convincing Zombie 101. There weren’t any bystanders, however—people had fled or, more likely, hidden themselves somewhere safe, though periodically the four of them heard screams of dying and dead in the distance. He did his best to ignore the spine-twisting noises. 

It wasn’t long before Lem declared them ready, grinning with pride. 

“Okay,” Ted took a deep breath. “Let’s get this over with.” 

_And try not to die,_ he thought, his gut tying itself in anxious knots. 

“There’s just one more thing,” said Linda hesitantly, looking grim and a little nauseous. 

“What’s that?” 

Linda swallowed uneasily. “Blood.” 

Ted felt a bit nauseous himself now, too. She was right, though—of the zombies he had seen, aside from the filth, general grossness, moaning, and staggering gait, there was always blood. 

“And how—how—how—how,” Phil stammered and couldn’t seem to get the rest of the sentence out. 

Lem saved him from having to, by jumping in and finishing it for him, though his voice was several octaves higher than normal. “How are we going to do—get— _that_?” 

Linda bit her lip apprehensively for a moment, then said, “Well, it involves more stealing.” 

Ted’s shoulders sagged with relief, because for a second there he was picturing way too many horrible scenarios about _procuring fresh blood_. He shuddered. 

“We have to,” he reminded her. “And I’m pretty positive stealing is the least gruesome or hideous option, so whatever it is, let’s do it.” 

Linda nodded and slid the phone she’d earlier “procured” from her pocket and did a quick search in her map app. She pointed up the street. “This way.” 

 

~

 

Linda consulted her phone multiple times as the foursome carefully picked their way through the eerily silent neighborhood. 

Once, another car came screeching around the corner and shot past them, nearly taking out a pointedly ignored stop sign. Once, they watched a man burst out of his house, snatch up the potted plant on his lawn as if it were his most prized possession, and then dash back inside with a terrified yelp. Once, they spotted a couple sets of eyes peek out from behind living room curtains, but they were gone as quickly as they had appeared. Aside from those, the foursome appeared to be the only signs of life in the general area. (Ted was not including the pair of alley cats fighting over some garbage in this “signs of life” assessment at this time.) 

At the end of the block and around the next corner, they found what Linda had them looking for: a small strip mall, squished between a row of suburbia and a major roadway, which was currently void of moving traffic but peppered with abandoned cars. In the distance, Ted could see the shining Veridian building. It was a testament to how messed-up the past day had been that seeing his workplace filled him with a sense of relief and normalcy instead of the usual feeling of _dear God what will it be today._

The buildings of the strip mall were dark and locked up. There was a convenience store, tanning salon, a doggie day spa (which Lem found highly amusing and couldn’t stop snickering at), adult video store (then Phil couldn’t stop snickering), a combination taxes-and-deli shop, and, lastly, a costume shop. The windows on the convenience store were broken and it looked like people had already panicked and looted it (“It hasn’t even been _two days_!” Linda shrieked hysterically, disparaging the entire human race). The other stores, however, must have been deemed of no value (yet) and were so far untouched. 

They approached the costume shop hesitantly, and then they all turned to Ted, waiting for his direction. Ted scooped up a rock, grit his teeth, mumbled a dozen apologies to the owner, prayed nobody saw them, and broke the glass on the front door. He cringed as the pieces cracked and tumbled around his feet, guilt for his crime already burning his throat. 

“Come on,” he said, gritting his teeth a little harder. “Let’s get this over with.” 

Inside the costume shop, Linda headed straight for the aisle where all the makeup and effects were kept. He would have been surprised that she knew exactly where to look, but Linda always had the best Halloween costumes, so she presumably had spent a lot of time in various costume shops (and perhaps this specific one). She tossed small tubes of fake blood to Ted and the boys, then retrieved a handful of fake wounds, followed by green, black, and white face paint to further their “dead” look. 

Ted stood in front of the mirror in the dressing room and applied streaks of green to his cheeks, and streaks of gray under his eyes. Next, he smeared sticky fake blood on his lips, chin, and the plastic chunk of “sliced-open flesh” Linda had attached to his forehead. 

For a moment, as he added squirts of the stuff to his dirty clothes, and Lem was standing next to him doing the same, he felt like this could be any old Halloween. They were just in costume, just about to head to Veridian’s annual Halloween party, and probably, finally scoop Best Group Costume from those bozos in Marketing (because c’mon, going as The Village People was _not_ original and the judges should’ve known that). 

Then there was a roar and a clatter outside that reminded him in hurry that no, this was not a costume party or Halloween. This was closer to something like the actual freaking apocalypse (and somehow it didn’t surprise him that Veridian was technically responsible for it). 

Ted whirled at the noise, terrified that real zombies were attacking the strip mall and their plan was about to be all for nought. 

“What is it?” Phil squealed, pausing in his act of counting out all the change in his pocket to leave behind for the shop’s owner. “Are we dead?” 

“Not yet,” said Ted and grit his teeth. He ran towards the window, but not too close, because hey, he’d watched a lot of movies (excluding horror), and you just didn’t stand right in front of the window _ever_. 

In the parking lot outside, a small battle was raging. Regular people were running for their lives—some were wielding various weapons like baseball bats, shotguns, and shovels—as a dozen or so zombies came stumping and moaning down the street. And was it Ted’s imagination and prickly feelings of terror, or were these zombies moving faster than the ones they’d seen at his house that morning? Were they seemingly more...well, _aware_? 

Ted swallowed really hard because he was at a loss as to how to proceed. If they ran out there now, there was a chance they’d get mistaken for being actual zombies by the people, and get shot at. There was also just as high of a chance that the zombies would see through their disguises and eat them instead of (or in addition to) the other people. 

A million scenarios flashed through his mind as he watched the city-dwellers wage war on the undead. Call out and bring the people in here? Barricade themselves inside? Run out and join the fight? Take a chance at getting shot? Stand here and watch? Do nothing? 

It was Linda behind him who spoke up half a minute later, in her _shit just got real and I am_ not _okay_ voice, with the only plan that mattered: “We have to get to the lab—we have to make a cure.” 

She curled her fingers around Ted’s arm and he pulled his eyes away from the scene outside. Linda’s own eyes were scared but determined, ringed by fake blood and green and black makeup. Ted laughed weakly—it wasn’t the time or the place, but he couldn’t help it. Everything was just too absurd at this point. 

“Come on, soldier,” Linda said, a tentative smirk curling her lips. “Let’s finish this.”

 

~

 

They snuck out the back and made a break for it, bolting down the alley, dashing over this street, cutting between houses, and sprinting over lawns and through a park. When they felt they had put sufficient distance between themselves and that particular pack of zombies, they slowed to a stop to go over The Plan one more time. This was repeatedly interrupted by Phil making increasingly less subtle remarks about the emptiness of his stomach. 

“It’s just they we skipped breakfast,” Phil whined. “And now lunch, and at this rate we’re going to miss _supper_ too!” 

Lem sniffed and poked at his glasses. “Our daily routines _have_ been completely kibosh-ed the past two days, it’s true.” 

“Guys,” Ted said, glancing between his two hungry geniuses. Truth be told, he was pretty hungry himself, but he figured Saving the World took precedence. “Moving on?” 

Phil pouted a little but acquiesced to Ted’s request. 

Forty-five minutes and one not-that-narrow escape-from-more-zombies later, and the foursome arrived at Ground Zero: the football-field-sized parking lot of Veridian Dynamics. 

Ted blew air out through his lips in rush a few times, trying to psych himself up for walking into the lion’s den dressed as a lion. Or zombie into a zombie den—did they have dens? Nests? Whatever, he was scared, he couldn’t do metaphors at that moment. 

“It’s gonna work,” Linda said chirpily beside him. “It is _totally_ gonna work.” She shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I’m telling you, it’ll be fine.” She twisted her hands in front of her, and scrubbed at big smear of dirt on her wrist. “Ted, _relax_ , it’s going to be fine!” She rounded on him, shouting: “ _Just calm down, all right, it’s going to work!”_

“Linda, I didn’t say a word,” Ted replied, trying not to smile. He wasn’t the only one totally freaking out, and that was comforting for some reason. 

“Oh. Right. Well. It’s going to work.” She bit her lip and stared across the expanse of pavement before them, which was still scattered with cars. Far beyond them, clustered near the front of the building, they could make out some ominous, undead shapes lumbering around. 

Ted shuddered nervously. 

“Actually, statistically speaking,” Lem piped up. “I think we have less than th—” 

“Never tell me the odds!” Linda barked at him. 

Phil cowered and Lem’s mouth became an “O” of surprise and Ted suddenly wanted to kiss Linda senseless right then and there. 

But she squared her shoulders and shot him a blazing look before stepping out of the shadows. She immediately hunched to the side and creaked her neck at an uncomfortable angle, flopping her arms slightly. 

Ted sucked in a deep breath and followed, limping awkwardly and a little bow-legged, letting his face go slack. Behind him, the scientists came next, with limp arms, lolling tongues, and terrible moans. 

After roughly three to five minutes of this, Ted realized he had never realized just how large the Veridian parking lot really was. Sure, when he’d been late and parked at the far end by the boulevard, it was a good distance from there to the front doors, but he never begrudged the exercise. Plus, he usually had a million things on his mind that caused him to not even notice how much he was walking, so it really took no time at all. 

But walking while dragging his leg, slow and ungainly, utterly terrified as he drew ever closer to a sizeable number of brain and flesh-eating creatures? The distance seemed to stretch for infinity. It took so long, in fact, that Ted was certain that empires rose and fell, the sun died and was born again, and the universe collapsed and started over while they limped and bobbed and shuffled. 

Finally, they were in the home stretch. The last hundred feet. There was just one gigantic problem—or rather, about fifty of them. 

Spread about those last hundred feet between them and the broken glass doors of Veridian Dynamics’ lobby, were something like fifty zombies (or maybe it was more like seventeen and a half, but it was hard to tell because it was around this point that sweat was pouring into Ted’s eyes and his heart was threatening to break his ribs and he was using every single ounce of willpower he had to keep on stumping). Most of the zombies seemed to take no note of them as they staggered, making gurgling and groaning noises. Some of the monsters were missing limbs or spattered with blood, and Ted fought not to gag at the smell surrounding them as they pressed on. 

_Seventy feet…_

But some of the rotting-faced zombies must have been curious or marginally more sentient or something, because they _looked._ A few of them actually turned their heads and _watched_ the newly-arrived foursome, and Ted’s heart was now smashing from his ribcage to his spine and back again. He didn’t dare to chance a look at his companions or to do anything, really, except keep up the charade. So he wobbled on, focusing on minimizing the trembling in his hands. 

_Fifty feet…_

One of the curious ones moved. And not in the aimless way the majority of the others were, but in a very deliberate way. Towards the foursome. And then another one, and then a third. 

_Thirty feet…_

Ted’s breath was all fluttery with terror and he rolled his head with a particularly loud, growling moan so he could catch a glimpse of the others. Phil’s groans were getting increasingly higher pitched and Linda’s eyes were as wide as her skull allowed. Ted couldn’t see Lem but figured he wasn’t doing much better. 

_Twenty feet…_

And then it all fell apart. One of the sort-of-sentient zombies closing in lunged for Phil, who stopped lumbering forward and screeched. Other zombies swivelled or hobbled towards the sound, drawn by the sudden change in their collective atmosphere. Lem gasped loudly, Ted instinctively spun to see what was happening, and then Linda yelled, “ _Run!”_

After that, it was chaos. The guys were screaming, Linda was screaming, the zombies were scrambling and waving their arms (well, the ones that had arms were waving them) and foaming at the mouth. And then Ted realized he was screaming too—basically, there was a lot of screaming and scrambling. 

Then Ted was all turned around, and the two scientists were getting overpowered, and he couldn’t see Linda and _oh god, this is it, we’re gonna be zombies_ — 

He saw a big, gross, rotting mouth come flying at his face and then it was smashed aside. It took half a second for his brain to catch up, but Linda was wielding a detached zombie arm like weapon, and so was Lem, his glasses broken and askew. Linda swung the arm in her hands in a wide arc, clocking another couple zombies, and then she kicked another one out at the knees. 

Lem was hollering like a banshee in a blender, swinging the arm in _his_ hands around in wild, blind circles. Phil was hunched behind him but also wailing like a banshee in a blender. Whether it was Lem’s fighting style or the particularly piercing octave that Phil’s voice had reached, the zombies were backing off, but only slightly. 

Ted ran for Linda, and tossed a look back at the guys. He suddenly had an idea that was probably, definitely suicidal, but, he supposed it was no more suicidal than what they’d done so far. 

“Hey!” he shouted. He stepped _towards_ the confused horde. 

“ _What_ are you doing!?” Linda spluttered behind him. 

Ted briefly lifted his shirt to wipe away a good portion of his makeup from his face. “Hey look I’m human!” He snagged his fingers on the prosthetic wound on his forehead and tore it off with a wince. 

“Ted, _what the hell_ —” 

The zombies were abandoning Lem and Phil and heading in Ted’s direction. It was working. 

“That’s right! Fresh meat! Look!” He waved his hands over his head. “My brains are delicious! Yay!” 

“ _Crispwhatthefrakkinghellareyoudoing!”_ Linda snatched his shoulder and her nails practically dug down to the bone as she hauled him several steps away from the monsters and towards her. 

The zombies were now hurrying forward as Ted and Linda were hurrying backwards. Beyond them, Ted spotted his two geeks scurrying for the now unprotected lobby entrance. They disappeared beyond the threshold. 

“Getting them inside,” Ted finally responded to Linda. He whirled abruptly, breaking her grip on his shoulder and snatched up her now free hand. “Now, _run!_ ” 

Linda yelped, caught off-guard, and nearly fell on her face at the sudden change in his momentum. She recovered swiftly, still clutching the zombie limb in her other hand, and matched Ted’s burst of speed. 

“You idiot!” she barked. “You stupid, brilliant idiot!”


	6. Chapter 6

_(Interlude: The Misadventures of Lem & Phil)_

  
Inside Veridian, Lem and Phil found a trail of mass destruction (or least, that was how the two scientists described it, because Ted was busy running for his life, so he didn’t actually experience this part firsthand). There were pools of blood, shreds of clothing, and the occasional bit of human shrapnel mixed with shattered glasses and broken furniture. There were upended desks and chairs, spilled cups of coffee, and volumes of trampled paperwork strewn everywhere. 

The geniuses picked their way through the desolate wasteland normally known as the Lobby while Ted and Linda continued their diversion outside. The pair headed for the stairs, choosing not to trust the elevators in the event of Probably an Apocalypse. 

Lem grasped the handle and gently opened the door with a creak that felt deafening in the empty main floor. He cringed and silently cursed Mick the Maintenance Man for not maintaining these doors properly. 

“Keep it down, will you!” Phil whimpered, glancing nervously over his shoulder. 

“I _am_ keeping it down,” Lem hissed, edging cautiously into the stairwell. “Tell that to the _door!_ ” 

He tossed his useless glasses that he only just realized were hanging brokenly from his ear. They clinked softly on the cement at his feet. 

They’d taken only a few steps when Lem stopped, which made Phil stop, and Lem gasped (because he’d remembered something very imperative), which made Phil gasp (probably because he didn’t know why Lem was gasping, and automatically and understandably assumed it was zombie-related). 

“What about the spiders?” Lem whispered, a little too hysterically for his liking. 

Phil’s eyes widened to their maximum wideness. “Do you think we should be worrying about mutant spiders when there are _literally flesh-eating zombies running around?_ ” He gave his friend a not-that-gentle _thwack_ upside the head. 

“Ow!” Lem grabbed at the place Phil had _thwacked_ him. “You _know_ I don’t do insects.” 

“For the last time,” Phil stated with extreme exasperation, and started down the stairs. “They are not _insects_ , they are _arachnids_. My God, man! And you call yourself A Man of Science!” 

The other man pouted a little and followed. “I don’t care what classification they are, they still give me the willies.” He shot the back of Phil’s head an irritated look before hurrying a little so he was side-by-side with Phil and could shoot him an irritated side-look instead. “Besides, if there were mutant starfish, you’d be the one protesting.” 

“They are creepy and unnatural, and that is a _legitimate_ fear!” 

Lem rolled his eyes. Honestly, the man could be _so_ irrational at times. 

There was more arguing about what did and didn’t qualify as a legitimate fear, and what would and would not be made worse by mutant characteristics before they reached the third-last landing. This time, Phil reached for the door and gave it a pull. 

Slightly past the door, a pair of zombies stood in the hallway. At the sudden movement, they whirled (as well as a zombie could whirl, anyway) and gave a grunting sort of moan of surprise (as well as a zombie could moan in surprise). Phil yelped and Lem yipped and together they slammed the door shut again. 

“Go, go, _go_!” Phil shouted unnecessarily as the pair pelted down to the second-to-last landing. 

Behind and above them, they could hear doors scraping open and the unmistakable sound of the undead on the scent for fresh brains. 

Lem flung open the door on the second-to-last landing, beyond which awaited a grand total of zero zombies, much to the scientists’ relief. The pair dashed into the hallway, which was brightly lit and felt sharply out of place with the rest of semi-apocalyptic feel of their day thus far. 

“We need a barricade!” Phil announced shrilly, and Lem wholeheartedly agreed. 

The first office on the left had a set of undamaged metal chairs stacked in the corner, and the geniuses ran for them. They hastened them back to the stairwell door and propped the chairs at an angle against it, before taking off in the opposite direction. Lem prayed they would hold back the monsters. 

Phil and Lem finally stuttered to a stop in front of the secondary labs. 

Unfortunately, _their_ lab was one floor up, and riddled with zombies. Fortunately, ever since the Lab Swap of 2006, the pair knew this one existed and had used it one time for five days (which was, in Lem’s opinion, five days too many, and it didn’t thrill him to have to use _this_ lab, but he supposed on-the-run-from-zombies scientists couldn’t be choosy scientists). 

They wasted no time rushing into the secondary lab, closing the doors, and barricading them with Really Heavy Things. 

“Okay!” Lem rubbed his hands together. “Now all we have to do is save humanity!” 

Phil exhaled heavily. “ _No_ pressure.”

 

~

 

Ted and Linda did a good job of getting and keeping the zombie’s attention. _Too_ good, in fact. 

Ted lost track of time as he and Linda ran. First they were escaping the horde in Veridian’s parking lot (and there was no way he imagining it by this point—the undead _were_ getting faster and more aware), and then, several streets over, they encountered a new batch of zombies (slower, thankfully, but not by much). 

His legs were burning and jellylike, his filthy borrowed shirt was caked with sweat alongside all the grass and dirt and makeup, and he kept getting a cramp below his ribs that _killed_. 

He was lucky to have Linda, though, and vice versa. For one thing, she was still carrying that zombie arm and using it like a baseball bat (which was both totally gross and totally impressive), and whenever he felt like he couldn’t go another step, she urged him on. And vice versa. He picked up a big rusty crowbar in a ditch by one of the deserted main roads (he was pretty good at cracking zombie heads with it, he had to admit) and, whenever Linda was ready to give up, he encouraged her to run just a little longer. 

At one point, they came upon the edge of the Quarantine Zone. The military had erected a bunch of big, imposing fences at least three times Ted’s height. The blockade stretched far off to the right out of sight, and the same to the left. Ted thought of the wobbly red line on the map Linda had shown him earlier, and struggled for a moment with the uncomfortable wriggly feeling in his stomach. 

“Now what?” Linda fretted. “Do we scale it? What?” 

Ted frowned. “Firstly, how would we even do that? And, secondly, I’m pretty sure they’re gonna shoot anything coming over the top of that fence, especially if it looks like a—” he gestured to Linda “—well, us.” 

She glanced down at herself and remembered her painted, fake-zombie-fied face. “Crap. I suppose we don’t really have time for a shower?” she winched and laughed weakly. 

He chuckled in return and shook his head. 

Far down the street, emerging from a behind a squat building labelled BOB’S CAR SHOP, came a pack of groaning creatures. 

Linda and Ted swore in union and started running again. 

All in all, there was an _outrageous_ amount of running involved.

 

~

 

_(Interlude Deux)_

 

Phil and Lem discovered fairly quickly that the best way to find the world-saving cure was to pretend that this was any other day at Veridian, and not, in fact, a day in which basically the whole world was counting on them to stop a full-fledged zombie apocalypse (even if they didn’t know it yet). And that zombies weren’t probably actively hunting them down somewhere in the building. They came to this realization after two failed attempts at creating the zombie cure, and Phil broke down crying hysterically. 

Lem’s lip wobbled and his hands shook as he reached for a new petri dish. He was not having a good day. 

After that, they concluded all they had to do was pretend this was a challenge: same as when they were required to weaponize eggplants in a month, same as when they had to create a fish that glowed in the dark but was also edible in two weeks, same as when they needed to make a pair of nail clippers that could cut through steel and granite and also could be edible in three-point-eight days. 

From there, it was smooth sailing and business as usual (if their business was sailing, which it wasn’t, but you get the picture). Mostly. 

“Where do they keep their hypodermic syringes?” Lem cried out in frustration. He pulled open drawer after drawer in vain. _Nothing_ was where it should have been! 

“Oh, over there by the graduated cylinders,” Phil gestured. 

Lem huffed and went to retrieve the equipment he was after. “Their organization in here makes _zero_ sense.” 

“I _know_ ,” his friend agreed emphatically. “Did you see that they’ve got their pipettes in that cupboard over there with their volumetric flasks? I mean, _honestly_ , _what_ were they thinking?” 

Lem shook his head. “Amateurs.” 

As the pair worked, they both mourned briefly that they were not in their own lab with their own tools and supplies. It couldn’t be helped, however, so they soldiered on. Lem thought that this was quite heroic and rather impressive, given that they were lacking a variety of supplies and equipment they normally had close at hand. This was, after all, the _secondary_ lab, and that had never been more apparent than at this moment. 

Lem passed Phil the substance he had created, Phil inspected it and fiddled with it and handed it back. While they worked, they argued good-naturedly at length about the moral correctness of revoking Pluto’s status as a planet, then the possibility of other galaxies and the planets within them, which devolved into an extensive conversation about the planets in the _Star Wars_ universe vs. the planets in the _Star Trek_ universe. 

Before they could get going on which of those planets in either fictional universe they would choose to establish a colony on, however, Phil cried out, “Eureka!” so suddenly that it nearly scared the pants off Lem. 

“Phil!” Lem exclaimed, a hand to his chest in surprise. “You nearly scared the pants off of me!” 

“Sorry, but _look_!” his friend jabbed gleefully at the sample of rotting zombie flesh, which, gross as it was, they had collected earlier in the name of Science from the Lobby of Destruction. The piece of really yucky stuff was slowly resembling normal flesh. 

Lem gasped so hard he almost pulled a muscle. “Did we just discover the cure for zombies?” 

Phil grinned, his eyes glittering with joy. “I think we just discovered the cure for zombies.” 

The guys took a moment to celebrate. Given the fact that no one else was around, this involved a lot of jumping, dancing, arm-waving, twirling, ecstatic giggling, clapping, and show tunes. Eventually, they sat down breathlessly and began to duplicate the purplish liquid they were dubbing, “The Cure (But Not The Band).” 

They babbled on about their own cleverness, Lem commending Phil on his brilliant face cream reverse engineering ideas, and Phil raving about Lem’s spectacular plan to break the zombie flesh down to a molecular level to discern what cells to attack with their serum/cure/thing. 

Unfortunately, they were only partway through the duplication process when the zombies came a-knockin’. 

There was a sudden _bang_ on the door to the lab that caused them to startle. Lem accidentally tipped over the microscope, and Phil felt out of his chair. 

“ _They’re here!”_ he hissed, picking himself up off the floor. 

“I can hear that!” Lem retorted, and tried to push his glasses higher on his nose. They were not on his face and had not been there for at least an hour, but he kept forgetting. 

The scientists glanced around, as if hoping a Helpful Plan About What To Do Now would simply appear. When none did, and there was another _bang_ , followed by another, Lem decided that retreat was the best course of action. He hastily began compiling their freshly created cure into a sturdy vial, while Phil gathered up their notes. 

The lab door was dented inwards a moment later, and through a crack they could see a number of zombies. Phil squeaked and snapped an elastic band around the roll of valuable notes. Lem pushed a stopper into the top of the vial, securing the precious contents within. 

Phil stuffed the roll of paper he was holding into his pants as he ran for the door on the far side of the room, which they’d also barricaded (but which was currently not being broken down). Lem shoved the small bottle in his fingers into his pants and followed his friend, and helped Phil move aside their barricade. 

The next room was an office with another door leading out to a hallway beyond, both of which thankfully were void of monsters. Barricade slightly aside, they opened the door just enough for them to squeeze through, and Phil did just that. 

The door they were currently retreating from finally gave way with a colossal noise, and zombies came pouring in. Phil waited impatiently in the office beyond, shouting for Lem to hurry. Lem was doing his best, but he just wasn’t quite as small as Phil, and it was taking a little more effort to make it between the door edge and the doorjamb… 

“Al…most...there…” Lem mumbled, his face very, very squished. 

“They’re coming!” Phil bellowed unnecessarily, because although Lem’s face was currently sideways and squashed in the direction of his friend, he wasn’t deaf. He could hear the rattling breaths, unsteady stomps, and growling groans advancing at an uncomfortably fast pace behind him. 

He squeezed the rest of the way and opened his mouth to yip in triumph, when pressure around his ankle abruptly brought him tumbling to the floor. 

“Lem!” Phil shouted. 

“Phil!” Lem yelled. 

Lem blinked the stars from his eyes and twisted around to see zombie arms clawing at the narrow opening, trying to get through, and one undead hand in particular that had latched onto his ankle. He tried to shake it off, but the grip was solid. 

Phil, always thinking on his feet (at least, more so than Lem in that moment, since Lem was not on his feet but awkwardly on his side-butt), snatched up a can of aerosol screen cleaner from the desk in the room and aimed it at the eyes of the offending zombies in the door crack. 

“Back, you wily vermin!” Phil commanded, spraying the can contents at the creatures. 

The zombies roared and moaned. Lem shook his leg. Phil sprayed the monsters again and hollered some more choice adjectives, until Lem was finally able to yank his foot free. He scrambled backwards out of the line of fire, and Phil nearly emptied the can on the zombies, spraying and bellowing continuously. The undead withdrew under the barrage. 

The pair seized the moment and exited the office, slamming the door behind them. 

“They’ll just come after us!” Phil observed shrilly. 

“We need to brace the door and then run like hell!” said Lem. 

While the zombies regrouped, the guys raided the lounge that adjoined the hallway they now found themselves in. They dragged the plush red couch down the hall and shoved it front of the door, before going back for the pair of chairs and the coffee table. The zombies were already scraping and groping and squeezing from the lab into the office. 

They scientists had barely got their barricade in place when the zombies flopped and fell against the door with a collective _thud_. There was a slim pane of glass in the wall to the left of the door, and one of the zombies moaned fiercely and pressed its disgusting face against the glass. 

With a jolt of ugly shock, Lem recognized the gross thing. 

“Lucy...” he whimpered, as his former almost-but-not-quite-girlfriend’s zombie maw sucked on the glass window. 

Phil placed a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Alas, it was never meant to be.” 

Lem knew this was true (and not only because of Lucy’s current status). Ever since the disaster that was the incident with the hypersonic machine when she’d fallen into Brody’s arms, however, he’d still clung to a thread of naïve hope that someday the stars would align and he’d have a second chance with her. 

They’d maybe bump into each other on the street and she’d be single, and he hadn’t seen her in months since she quit Veridian to do something awesome (probably build rockets or jump out of them, in space—he didn’t actually know, he was just assuming, here). Then they’d laugh about the time they were all forced to lab together, about his sneezing and her puking, and what’s-his-name (because in his mind it was so short-lived she can’t remember his name anymore). Then he’d casually invite her to coffee, all calm and friendly-like, and she’d smile and accept and be generally dazzling as usual, and at the coffee shop they’d laugh and chat, and chat and laugh, and months later they’d get engaged... 

(He often cast Denzel Washington to play himself in these scenarios because Denzel was the Man, though if he was feeling adventurous, he’d sometimes branch out and cast someone unexpected, like The Rock, but with glasses, obviously.) 

“Back to _running like hell?_ ” Phil asked, snapping Lem out of his train of thought. 

“Oh yes,” Lem replied, and made a motion to fix his glasses which, damn it, were _still_ not on his face. “Ready when you are, my friend.” 

Phil gave a brief nod, then promptly took off as fast as his little legs would carry him. Lem followed, not-quite-but-almost matching his friend’s velocity. (Blatantly ignoring the memo about no running, but they figured running from zombies was an acceptable exception.)


	7. Chapter 7

_(Interlude The Third)_

The (mis)adventures of Phil and Lem continued as they escaped from the labs of Veridian, dodged zombie hordes, and then burst out of the fire escape into the bright, late-afternoon sun. They stopped for a moment, unsure what to do next. Then zombies emerged from the fire escape behind them, and from down the street to the left, and from around the building to the right.

Phil and Lem took off running again.

If anything about this day was lucky (aside from finding a cure for being a zombie, but they both attributed that to their combined genius and skill, not luck), then it was this: the northernmost border of the particular Quarantine Zone lay just one neighborhood northeast of Veridian Dynamics. It wasn’t long before they found it and then found themselves trying to explain why they were still dressed as zombies so the men with guns did not shoot them.

After a lot of getting ordered to talk one at a time, a lot of convincing, a lot of rambling, and a lot of pleading, the pair were allowed just beyond the fence. They discovered what looked like a small army camp, with hastily-erected tents, and dozens of people in uniforms looking really busy and really serious. Beyond the camp-like area was another tall, scary-looking black fence like the one at the scientists’ backs.

“Stay here,” the man they had whined—spoken—to at the gates told them. He was tall and good-looking and reminded them of Ted (poor, heroic, being-chased-by-zombies-on-their-behalf-somewhere Ted).

When Phil and Lem squeaked anxiously at being given this order, considering they were still standing pretty close to the gate area and sporadic bursts of gunfire could be heard behind them, the military man sighed harshly through his nose and gestured the pair forward (a lot like Ted might). They followed at once.

The uniformed man they both silently had named Almost Ted stopped before one of the tents and spoke to the two men who were on duty nearby.

“Say they have a cure,” said Almost Ted.

The two men on duty peered at the scientists a little incredulously. The geniuses smiled hopefully and apprehensively.

“Seriously?” said one, who was a little like The Rock, so Lem dubbed him Dwayne.

Almost Ted shrugged, Dwayne narrowed his eyes at Phil and Lem, while the other man (who didn’t look like anyone in particular, so Lem called him Not Dwayne) gestured for Almost Ted to go into the tent.

Almost Ted told them to wait outside, which they did, nervously bouncing on the balls of the feet. Lem absently moved to poke at his glasses then remembered he wasn’t wearing any, _still_ , and felt thoroughly annoyed with himself. Phil started humming slightly but ceased when Dwayne and Not Dwayne shot him a wary look.

“It’s makeup,” Lem assured the man with a toothy grin, assuming their mistrust was a result of the boys’ costumes.

“We’re bona fide humans,” Phil nodded fiercely. “We swear on Someone Important’s grave.”

“Nixon,” Lem supplied helpfully. Dwayne’s eyes were still narrowed.

“Wait, _is_ he dead?” Phil questioned. “Wait, _which_ Nixon?”

Not Dwayne looked skyward as if seeking release from this idiocy (and Lem was a little offended by this, honestly).

The tent flap opened, and out came Almost Ted—

Lem stopped.

Phil stopped. He gave that little squawk of disbelief he did sometimes (like when a particularly juicy plot-twist was revealed on _The New Adventures of Old Christine_ ).

“Oh _my_ ,” said Phil, recovering himself, and drawing out the ‘y’.

“ _Oh_ ,” said Lem, exhaling a lot of ‘h’’s. “My.”

 

~

 

A pack of the creatures dogging Ted and Linda had joined forces with another bunch of monsters, before encountering a bevy of more zombies. The pair of exhausted, scared humans dodged _that_ particular group of the undead, only to discover a fresh herd that had merged with posse, which then combined into a new flock.

“My God,” Linda panted after a while. “They’re _herding_ us.”

Ted gulped.

And that certainly seemed to be the case. Even once the pair lost their shambling, rotting pursuers for a while, they inevitably would come upon a different horde, which forced them to change direction. While Ted and Linda had been _trying_ to stick to the outskirts of the Zone and find an exit, possibly convince someone in charge they were in fact not zombies, the monsters continuously were cutting off their routes and forcing them back into the city.

Ted didn’t want to believe it was on purpose, but the alternative was just as unsavoury: either the zombies were getting more sentient as their numbers grew and were actively trying to corner the humans they’d found, or Ted and Linda were possibly some of the only actual humans left in this Zone and they were running into more and more zombies because _there only were_ zombies.

There were, thankfully small pockets of downtime, where the pair had seemingly outrun the things and were able to slow their pace all the way to a shuffle and catch their breath (Ted would’ve been dead hours ago if they hadn’t had these moments, he decided).

“What would you be…” Ted struggled to get his breath back as he and Linda plodded across a quiet soccer field. “Doing...right now?”

“You mean…” Linda panted. “If today wasn’t the Apocalypse?”

“Technically, I think...that was yesterday?”

“Semantics,” Linda replied.

They fell quiet for a moment, breathing hard. Ted swiped at his sweaty face is vain, because his hands and arms were as covered in dirt, makeup, and sweat as his face.

“I don’t know what time it is, but…” Linda glanced up at the sky. “I’d say it’s probably...past quitting time. So, I’d be at home...probably with wine...and a good show...and...pasta.” She sighed. “God, I haven’t had pasta in forever. Screw dieting.”

Ted chuckled and could picture the scene easily, and it cheered him in a strange way, despite everything. Then he pictured himself on her couch too (and Rose down the hall, sleeping in the guest room). He imagined reaching over to steal a sip of her wine, and she playfully swatted his hand in reprimand but let him have her wine all the same, and then he focused on the TV screen where a man who travelled in time inside a blue box was busy saving the universe…

“And you, Crisp?” Linda asked, jolting him back to the unfortunate present.

“Oh, you know,” he said evasively, then added with a wide grin in her direction, “The same.”

The pretty smile she returned let him know that she was thinking of a similar scene.

Reality reared its (literally) ugly head a half moment later when half a dozen zombies staggered into view on the far side of the field. Ted sighed a little because he was _really_ _freaking over_ this whole thing, before grasping Linda’s hand and charging off across the grass.

 

~

 

They had tried to hide in empty houses twice, but it was twice too many as zombies inevitably found them, and Ted and Linda had to fight their way out (and he tried his hardest not to think of Veronica dying for him that morning, which felt like seventy-five years away now).

“It’s like…” Linda panted, her zombie makeup now comically streaking from all the sweat on her face. “They have...our scent…”

Ted shook his head, unable to form a response until he got his breath back.

By the time they’d escaped to the Downtownish area of New Hillvalleydale, Ted was feeling pretty spent.

He felt dizzy from lack of food and too much adrenaline and way the hell too much running (he vowed then and there that if he lived through this day, he would never run again because he’d done more than enough to last a freaking lifetime). He was tired of being scared, tired of expecting the worst, and tired of clinging to the hope that his boys were going to get them out of this with their so-called cure (and that was assuming they’d made it into their lab alive, _and_ had enough equipment to do what they needed to do, _and_ made it back _out_ alive _with_ the cure…)

He wasn’t going to discard _all_ hope, but, well, if he was being honest, the odds had never been in their favor (he was, like, this close to dying, he could quote _The_ _Hunger Games_ if he wanted to). This led him down a path of thought somewhere along the lines of, _What Would Katniss Do?_ The answer of course, was get to some poison berries and threaten to die by eating them and hopefully the zombies would relish his fresh brains more than his dead brains, and therefore would choose not to kill him.

Or, the answer was also possibly that he needed to keep fighting no matter what. Which, unfortunately, meant that they had to keep on running ( _damn it_ ).

The sun was setting, so it was getting darker out, what with all the tall office buildings casting deep shadows everywhere and creating ominous nooks and crannies. Ted hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s dinner (which had consisted of a peach, a handful of chips, and a few bites of the pasta he’d made for Veronica, because after the day he’d had, he hadn’t been very hungry for some reason). Then there was the fact that his legs were starting to physically give out (earning him skinned knees and elbows and a bruised face every time he fell), and Linda wasn’t doing much better, stumbling and tumbling along beside him.

Ted noted all these things because it was the only explanation he could come up with for why, in his _don’t die don’t die keep running don’t die_ haze, he stopped paying attention to the direction his feet were going, and turned left on Albuquerque Street. Which, as everyone who lives in New Hillvalleydale knows, ends in a dead end alleyway.

“No,” Ted mumbled through parched lips (and God, why hadn’t they stolen water from somewhere—oh yeah, _trying not to die_ ) when his bleary eyes focused on the cement wall twenty feet before them.

“Ted,” Linda gasped, collapsing to her knees, struggling for breath. “We...can’t...we…” she waved her hand over her shoulder behind her. “Dead…”

_Yes Linda,_ Ted thought. _We’re dead._

But before Ted could summon his nonexistent strength to clamber back to his feet and exit this deathtrap of an alley, death in the form of zombies arrived to literally trap them. A couple dozen of them hobbled and stumped into the mouth of the alley, mouths foaming, skin rotting.

Ted managed to stand, only to falter dazedly backwards until his back hit cement, Linda right beside him.

_This is it,_ he thought. _It’s over. I hope that by some miracle, there_ is _a cure. ‘Cause we’re gonna need it._

He felt Linda grasp his shaking hand at his side.

“Ted,” she whispered.

“Linda,” he whispered.

The zombies began to advance.

The sound was deafening, and Ted instinctively dove for cover behind the big green dumpster nearby, as the ground shook and a wave of heat blasted down the alley. The sensation was over as fast as it had occurred, and when Ted very tentatively peeked around the edge of the dumpster, he saw with complete surprise that the bevy of brain-eaters had been rather spectacularly dispatched (needless to say, it was really, really gross and Ted did his best not to look _too_ closely at the...well, there was an explosion _in_ a bunch of zombies. It was easy to imagine how the aftermath of _that_ might look).

“What was that?” Linda whispered, hovering at his shoulder. “Are they—is the military bombing us?”

“I don’t know,” said Ted.

Despite his exhaustion, he stood. And then he took a step forward, followed by another. They were wobbly, uncertain steps, but steps all the same. He picked his way carefully through the smoky... _aftermath_ (all the while not looking down because, empty though his stomach may be, it was already pitching at the smell, and he didn’t need to add sight to the mix) and the crater left over from the explosion. He very carefully peered down the street to the left, then to the right. There was a rumbling beneath his feet and the sun peeked between a pair of buildings to wash the street in deep golden light.

Then, through the dust and the smoke and the evening sun dipping low in the sky, straight out of the most epic war movie Ted could remember ever having seen, came Veronica Palmer, riding on the back of a gigantic military truck. She was dressed in khaki cargo pants and a camo tank top, her long blonde hair in its signature severe bun, and she was holding a massive gun as if it weighed hardly anything at all.

As the truck pulled up before them, men in fatigues and thick body armor poured out of the trucks and fanned out in every direction. Veronica pointed this way and that, barking orders, and Ted simply stared and stared and _stared_.

He was dreaming. He was _sure_ of it. Because Veronica was dead—he hadn’t seen a trace of her since she’d made them leave her behind at his house. And there had been _so many zombies—_ he didn’t care who you were, even Chuck Norris couldn’t have taken on that many (well, then again, Chuck Norris was Chuck Norris, so he probably could have and—anyways, Ted was getting away from the point).

So this was a dream. He had died in that alley and now, inexplicably, he was dreaming. Or something. He wasn’t surprised that his subconscious put Veronica into the savior role, as she was probably the strongest person he’d ever known.

Real or not, Veronica hopped down and approached them, half of a proud smile at the corner of her mouth while her eyes danced with unspoken relief.

“Been looking for you,” she said by way of greeting. Ted just stared—he _really_ couldn’t stop staring.

She looked him and Linda up and down, taking in their dishevelled once-upon-a-time-pretending-to-be-zombies attire and unrecognizably smeared makeup, and quirked her eyebrow at Ted. Rather than commenting, however (and ignoring his gaping stare like she’d been fully expecting this particular reaction), she merely nodded at him and then nodded to the truck. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Ted felt Linda still standing beside him. He remained unmoving.

“Pick up your jaws and get in the truck,” Veronica instructed, her tone as hard and unnervingly normal as had it been back at Veridian. She could’ve been ordering someone to get her coffee or to speed up the Halibut Rehabilitation Program just as easily as she was ordering them now. She rested the butt of her gigantic gun on her hip and gestured impatiently at them.

“Hello? Other people need saving? Get _in_.”

Well, even if it was going to suck when he woke up from this great dream later, Ted did as he was told following her into the truck, limbs moving of their own accord. He settled onto the floor of the vehicle’s spacious cargo hold beside Veronica, amid a handful of other shell-shocked survivors. Linda sunk down next to Ted.

“By the way,” Veronica said, glancing down at the pair of them. “Your nerds did a pretty bang-up job, if I do say so myself.”

Ted stared (yup, more staring—he seriously couldn’t help it, and he was pretty sure he was in shock. Like actual, medical, shock). He wanted to form words, but was afraid to disrupt the dream. So he kept staring.

“Phil and Lem got us the cure,” she told him. “It doesn’t work on those are too far gone, unfortunately, thus the _drastic_ measures back there, but we’ve got people duplicating and distributing it as we speak.” She added thoughtfully, “Remind me to give them a raise.”

The truck engines rumbled and the vehicle shook and chugged forward down the debris-strewn road.

“Is this really happening?” Linda breathed in Ted’s ear. “Is it really over?”

He swallowed, trying to sort out his thoughts, because he was doing to best to wake up, and still hadn’t. He chanced a glance at Linda, managing to meet her eyes, brimming with frightened hope (and still smudged with black and grey and green costume paint).

“I hope so,” he replied honestly.

Her eyes glistened and she grabbed his hand, grasping it tight like a lifeline, so hard it hurt, but it felt _good_ because he _felt it_. He squeezed her hand back, so tight their knuckles were white and their bones were pinching and their nails were digging into their skin.

Linda shut her eyes and took a shuddering breath.

“Ted,” she whispered. “If this is a dream, please don’t wake me up.”

He smiled. “Me, too.”

Veronica glanced down at him, and her hard features softened just a little. “It’s good to see you, Ted. You too, Zwordling.” 


	8. Chapter 8

**Epilogue**

Management gathered at the headquarters of Veridian Dynamics in Chicago, crowded around a shiny black conference table. The room of the high rise building had a magnificent view outside the massive windows lining the south wall, with the sun shining bright and high in the sky. It looked like any other summer day.

The PR Manager scooped the TV remote off the table and clicked on the flat screen mounted on the east wall. She flipped from channel to channel, and it didn’t matter which she landed on: the only thing on any of them was the zombie near-apocalypse in New Hillvalleydale.

_“The quarantine zones within New Hillvalleydale remain in place until the army deems it safe to tear them down…”_

Click.

_“…ramifications, for the people directly involved as well the surrounding areas…”_

Click. 

_“…only people passing through the Quarantine Zone gates are the military and specific medical personnel bearing the cure, which sources confirm fully reverses the effects of…”_

Click.

_“It’s disgusting! Someone needs to pay! This—this_ event _is unprecedented and should not have happened! What we need to determine…”_

Click. 

_“…cure has already been administered to almost two hundred and twelve people, though the death toll has been estimated to be over sixty-six for those too far gone to…”_

Click.

“ _…and questions are being asked about what happens next, not just for New Hillvalleydale itself, but the country at large…”_

Click.

The head of Management leaned back in his chair, resting his elbows on the chair’s arms, and steepled his fingers before him.

Grim as the situation was, Veridian Dynamics was used to hurdles like this, though admittedly perhaps not of this magnitude. The Head of Management was not terribly concerned, however. There was always a way to spin any disaster, a way to both take blame and avoid it, a way to redeem themselves should the world want to hold them responsible (though there was no concrete proof that Veridian _was_ in fact wholly responsible—eyewitnesses could be unreliable, and there was no concrete evidence that the zombies that reportedly had emerged from Veridian on Z-Day were indeed _the_ source of the wide-spread infection).

Besides, the world had a notoriously short memory, he knew from personal experience, even for something as devastating as this. It never ceased to surprise him.

_We move forward_ , he thought. _And the world will follow as it always has since this company was founded in 1957._

The executive smiled.

 

~

 

_Veridian Dynamics._

_Mistakes. We all make them, and that’s bad. But sometimes, making a mistake results in something good. Like penicillin, the pacemaker, the slinky, potato chips, and serums to cure zombification-itis. Hopefully permanently. Not everyone can forgive mistakes, but here at Veridian Dynamics, we do. Usually._

_Veridian Dynamics. Mistakes. We forgive you. As long it results in something great._

 

**-end-**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S FINALLY DONE!! Thank you once again to my lovely betas for all their hard work, and also to every kudos-er and commenter. You are very appreciated! :)
> 
> Here's to never writing zombies again because that was gross. XD


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